Energy & Critical Minerals · Geothermal
Geothermal ownership and title under Chapter 141, leases and surface agreements, Railroad Commission Rule 46 permitting, well conversion, and the oil-and-gas and brine overlap questions that decide who owns what comes out of the well — in Texas, Oklahoma, and Utah.
Texas resolved the first question every geothermal developer asks — who owns the heat — in 2023, expanded the Railroad Commission's role, and has watched permitting accelerate since. The remaining questions are the ones we work on: title on the specific tract, leases and surface agreements that fit the technology, RRC permitting, and the overlap with oil and gas and brine rights in the same formation.
Examination of the surface estate and any geothermal reservations or conveyances recorded before the June 2023 statute, under Natural Resources Code Chapter 141, with an opinion on lease authority.
Lease and option forms built for closed-loop, enhanced, and co-produced geothermal projects, surface-use and access agreements, and pore-space provisions.
Statewide Rule 46 (16 TAC §3.46) injection permits for geothermal and geopressured wells — Form GT-5 applications with the W-1 and H-1A well data, freshwater-protection construction, maximum injection pressure, and mechanical-integrity and H-10 annual reporting — plus closed-loop wells under 16 TAC Chapter 6, and the Rule 46 / Rule 82 classification question for projects that recover minerals from geothermal fluid.
Representation of geothermal permit applicants in protested dockets before the Commission — standing, scope, permit conditions, and coordination with any related title proceeding.
Lease, JOA, and surface analysis for converting existing wells to geothermal use, and agreements among working-interest owners, the operator, and the surface owner.
Agreements for geopressured energy storage, power purchase and heat offtake, and project-level commercial structure — including dispatchable-power and data-center offtake.
Project structure, capital formation, and multi-state commercial agreements for enhanced-geothermal developments in southwest Utah and the Basin and Range, with Utah local counsel on state land, water, and permitting.
Entity formation, joint ventures, and Regulation D offerings for geothermal developers, coordinated with state and federal incentive programs. See energy capital formation.
In the Smackover the same well can produce heat and lithium-bearing brine, and four legal features shape how such a project is put together:
How a project sequences its geothermal and mineral phases has regulatory, title, and revenue-timing consequences. We advise on that sequencing as a principal-level decision.
Geothermal is a multi-state practice for us. Utah has become the proving ground for enhanced geothermal systems, with utility-scale projects in Beaver County and a state framework built around the Utah Division of Water Rights and SITLA leasing rather than a Chapter 141 analogue; Oklahoma's co-produced and closed-loop projects sit on top of the same oil and gas wellbores and JOAs we already work with. We handle project structure, capital formation, offtake, and multi-state commercial agreements in each, with local counsel covering state-specific land and permitting.
Since June 18, 2023, Texas Natural Resources Code §141.004 (enacted by Senate Bill 785) provides that geothermal energy and associated resources below the surface of land are owned as real property by the surface owner, unless they were previously severed. Instruments recorded before that date that reserved or conveyed geothermal rights are respected, which is why every geothermal project still requires a title examination of the specific tract. The statute expressly does not reach minerals dissolved in groundwater or hot brines.
The Railroad Commission of Texas regulates geothermal resource wells under Chapter 141, and Senate Bill 786 (2023) added jurisdiction over closed-loop geothermal injection wells that previously sat with the TCEQ. The Commission issued its first deep geopressured geothermal permit since the 2023 legislation in early 2025 and its second in July 2026; shallow geothermal well permits have roughly doubled year over year. We prepare permit applications and handle the Commission process.
Often, and that is one of the most active areas of Texas geothermal development. The legal questions are whether the oil and gas lease and the JOA permit the use, whether the geothermal resource was severed before June 18, 2023, what the surface owner's consent and compensation look like, and how the RRC will treat the conversion. We handle the lease, surface, and permitting analysis together.
The same Smackover brine that carries lithium also carries heat, and a single well can potentially produce both. Chapter 141 assigns geothermal energy to the surface owner but expressly carves out minerals dissolved in hot brines, whose ownership remains governed by unsettled general Texas law — so characterizing what is being produced determines who owns it and, in part, who regulates it. We work on exactly this question for Smackover projects. More on lithium and brine.