If you own a peice of land, do you own it all the way to the centre of the earth?

Question

I saw this question somewhere and I couldn't make up my mind what the answer is :P

Answer 1

No. In the US when a coal company removes coal under your property using the Room and Pillar technique, damage due to subsidence on the surface of the land is the responsibility of the land owner, not the coal mine operator excavating under your land. If you do not own land less than a kilometer under your land how can you own it to the center of the Earth?

Answer 2

Depends on where you live, and what mineral rights you get with the property.

In my neck of the woods, the Provincial Government owns all mineral rights to subsurface material, the landowner only gets surface rights.

This is a holdover to Western settlement, when the Federal Government found it was a lot more convenient to withhold the mineral rights when they gave out farmland, rather than renegotiate with settlers every time they needed more coal.

The Feds finally passed the mineral rights to the Province in 1930, when the need for coal had dwindled. Then, of course, oil was discovered in Alberta in 1932, and the Feds have been kicking themselves ever since.

There are a few homesteads around the Province which include mineral rights, but not many.

Coincidentally, this has greatly increased the ability to properly excavate fossil finds like dinosaurs. Because the fossils legally belong to the Provincial Gov't, there is no need for museums and universities to pay landowners millions of dollars for the fossils (as happens in the States). Nor can landowners excavate the fossils themselves and sell them on the open market - without collecting any stratigraphic, location or paleoecological information with the excavation.

Answer 3

Of course you would own all the land but there are governmental restrictions in place that would prevent you from just using the land below a certain depth. A barrage of legal documentation would have to be presented in order for you to reach the inner most areas of your land. If there was a discovery of oil or precious mineral content several miles below you would retain rights to that content and of course would become wealthy. Now if you dig past the center of the earth you do realize that you will be encroaching on someone else's property and will be charged with illegal trespass.

Answer 4

Not necessarily. In most parts of the world, you only legally own your land so far down, and after a while the dirt becomes government property (so they can build pipes and subways and stuff under there if they want to).