Louisiana mineral rights search: parish records, SONRIS and servitudes

Where Louisiana mineral rights are recorded

Louisiana has parishes instead of counties, and land records are kept by the parish clerk of court. Sales, mineral deeds, servitude and royalty conveyances, and leases are filed in the clerk's conveyance records for the parish where the land lies. Successions, the court proceedings that pass a deceased owner's property to heirs, are filed with the clerk of court too, and the judgment of possession that ends one is what puts heirs in the record.

Many parishes offer remote access through the Louisiana Clerks' Remote Access Authority, a state entity the Legislature created in 2014 to run a statewide portal to participating clerks' records. Remote access can shorten a Louisiana mineral rights search, but access terms differ, so check what your parish offers.

Is the servitude or royalty still alive?

Under Louisiana Revised Statutes 31:27, a mineral servitude is extinguished by ten years of nonuse, and under 31:85 a mineral royalty ends the same way. When a servitude ends, the mineral rights return to the landowner. So for every severed interest you find, check for production or qualifying drilling in each ten-year period since it was created.

That is why well and production records carry so much weight here, and why a Louisiana mineral rights search is as much about wells as about deeds. They are your evidence of use, and a long gap with neither is a reason to have title examined before anyone pays for the interest.

Is my land being drilled? SONRIS

If your tract sits in a Haynesville unit that has produced, pull the unit survey plat: it shows how the state's file divides the mineral rights across the unit.

SONRIS is Louisiana's public database of wells, units, production and imaged documents. The Department of Conservation and Energy, which replaced the Department of Energy and Natural Resources on October 1, 2025, publishes SONRIS guides for each search.

• Well Information Search: in the SONRIS Data Portal, choose Well Information, then search by section, township and range. The well serial number opens a detailed report, and the latitude links to the well in SONRIS GIS.
• Unit survey plats: for units that have produced, the plat shows the mineral ownership of the pooled unit. Most are indexed by field order in Document Access.
• Field orders: unitization orders are imaged by order number and found through the field order index or Document Access.
• Production: records from 1977 on are kept by LUW code in the SONRIS Data Portal; older figures are on production audit cards in Document Access.

Unclaimed royalties in Louisiana

The Louisiana Department of the Treasury holds unclaimed property such as uncashed checks. Search the official site at unclaimedproperty.la.gov under each past mineral rights owner. Mineral rights under state-owned lands and water bottoms are leased by the State Mineral and Energy Board, not by private owners.

Louisiana mineral rights search, step by step

Keep a dated list of wells and production as you go; it's your record of use.

1. Get the parish and the section, township and range from a deed, lease or royalty statement.
2. Search the parish clerk of court's conveyance records for each owner and pull every sale, mineral deed, servitude or royalty conveyance and lease.
3. Search succession records for each past owner who died and note each judgment of possession.
4. Run a Well Information Search in SONRIS for your section, township and range.
5. Pull unit survey plats and field orders for any unit covering your tract, and check production by LUW code.
6. Search unclaimedproperty.la.gov under every family name.

When to call a landman or attorney

Whether a servitude survived a gap in production is a legal question, so have an oil and gas attorney examine title before you lease, sell or assume old mineral rights are lost. Bring the dated list of wells and production from your Louisiana mineral rights search; it's the evidence of use the examination will turn on.

Our page on selling mineral rights in Louisiana covers the Haynesville parishes, and Louisiana mineral rights value explains how gas prices and severance tax shape offers. When your title is clear, get offers from buyers active in your parish.

Louisiana questions