Unlike many other countries, United States of America is offering its citizens, the full rights on the things which are over and under the surface of the owned property. Here the citizens have all the rights to farm on the land, build on the land and to dig the land for minerals. They can also sell or lease their mineral rights to any person and can earn sufficient amounts of income on the minerals produced by his property.
In general minerals are a part of the property and belong to the people who own the general ownership of the property. But few land owners are not interested in developing the minerals start selling the mineral rights separately and hence those rights are diverged from the ownership.
With these transfer of rights, the company who owns the rights have all the rights on the minerals underneath and can do anything like exploring, mining or they can also lease them for another company. However, the law in the United States state that even the mineral right owners are granted only for the reasonable use of the land unless the agreement specifies that the leasing company can remove minerals at any time regardless of the effect on the surface.
And it is the responsibility of the land owner to enclose all the rights he would like to sell and the buyer needs to check for them and clarify his doubts prior to the agreement. Mineral rights sales will always be filed at the county’s recorder’s office like other land sales.