"Buying Land in Wyoming: Does the Pore Space Under It Come With the Deed?"

A mile or two under a Wyoming hay meadow there is a layer of sandstone with tiny gaps between the grains, and in 2008 Wyoming became the first state in the country to write down who owns those gaps. The Legislature called them pore space. Carbon storage companies lease them, and a landowner can sell them off the same way a rancher once sold off the oil and gas. So when you buy land in Wyoming, it can come in three separate pieces: the surface, the minerals, and the pore space.

In Wyoming, the pore space under land you buy comes with the surface. Under W.S. § 34-1-152, the pore space in every layer beneath the surface transfers with the deed to the surface, unless an earlier recorded document already severed it from the surface or your deed expressly leaves it out. The title commitment shows you which of those is true before closing, and the deed the seller signs to you confirms it.

I'm Jeff Moran, a mortgage broker in Bluffton, South Carolina, originating since 1996, NMLS #483943, through C2 Financial Corporation, licensed in fifteen states, including Wyoming. On Wyoming land, the title commitment, the title company's written report on the property, arrives after the contract is accepted. That is where this shows up, and it helps to know what to look for before it arrives.

Pore space in Wyoming, in plain words

Pore space is the open room inside underground rock: the gaps between grains of sandstone, the space that used to hold brine or oil. The 2008 bill described it as the space in subsurface geologic formations that can be used to store carbon dioxide or other substances.

Governor Freudenthal signed House Bill 89 on March 4, 2008, the first comprehensive carbon sequestration law in any state (Holland & Hart, Wyoming Leads Nation with Clean Coal Legislation). The ownership rule it created is at W.S. § 34-1-152 in the Legislature's published Title 34 statutes.

Wyoming pore space stays with the surface owner by default

W.S. § 34-1-152(a) states the rule in one sentence: "The ownership of all pore space in all strata below the surface lands and waters of this state is declared to be vested in the several owners of the surface above the strata." If you own the top, you own the room underneath, unless a document says otherwise.

The next part of the statute covers the deed you get at closing: "A conveyance of the surface ownership of real property shall be a conveyance of the pore space in all strata below the surface of such real property unless the ownership interest in such pore space previously has been severed from the surface ownership or is explicitly excluded in the conveyance." In plain words, your deed does not have to mention pore space for the pore space to come to you. You do not get it in two cases: an earlier document in the county records already separated it from the surface, or the deed the seller signs to you says the seller is keeping it.

The statute also lets an owner sell the pore space and keep the surface, the same way owners sell mineral rights. Once that happens, the pore space has its own deed from then on. That is what "previously severed" means.

An old mineral deed does not take the pore space with it either. The statute says that no agreement conveying mineral or other underground interests "shall act to convey ownership of any pore space in the stratum unless the agreement explicitly conveys that ownership interest." So if a seller long ago kept the oil and gas and the deed never said pore space, the pore space stayed with the surface, and it comes to you.

This is the opposite of the mineral rule

On a Wyoming split estate, an earlier owner sold or kept the minerals, and they stay with that owner until another deed moves them. Buying acreage in Wyoming when someone else owns the minerals covers what a surface owner is owed. Pore space stays with the surface until a document specifically moves it, and a mineral reservation on its own does not move it.

A 2009 amendment, House Bill 57, keeps the mineral owner's long-standing rights in place. It adds this to W.S. § 34-1-152: "The severed mineral estate is dominant regardless of whether ownership of the pore space is vested in the several owners of the surface or is owned separately from the surface." In plain words, on a parcel where someone else owns the minerals, owning the pore space does not let you stop the mineral owner from drilling through it. Water rights are a separate document again, and whether the water right comes with the land has its own article.

Reading the title commitment for pore space

The title commitment is the title company's written report, issued before closing, of what its policy will and will not cover. Schedule B lists the exceptions the policy leaves out. Pore space an earlier owner already sold off separately, a recorded pore space lease, or a recorded memorandum of a storage agreement shows up there, the same way a mineral reservation does. A memorandum is a short notice filed in the county records saying that a lease or agreement exists. Our guide to reading Schedule B when something shows up on it explains which items get cleared before closing and which stay, and a pore space conveyance stays.

These documents do get recorded. University of Wyoming researchers collecting storage agreements found thousands of recorded memoranda in county records (UW SER pore space story map). If an earlier owner leased or sold the pore space, the record most likely says so.

Two more parts of W.S. § 34-1-152 protect you. A transfer of pore space rights made after the 2008 effective date is void at the surface owner's option if it does not contain a specific description of the location of the pore space being transferred. Every recorded document transferring pore space rights also has to describe the scope of any right to use the surface, and the statute gives the pore space owner no surface rights beyond what that recorded document says. If a storage company holds the pore space under the meadow, the recorded document tells you whether it can also put a well pad or a road on top.

Please ask the title company for the full commitment and for copies of the recorded documents behind each Schedule B exception, all pages, the day the contract is accepted. A Wyoming title agent's licence does not include the practice of law, so a Wyoming real estate attorney reads the pore space deed or lease.

Confirming it in the deed before closing

Wyoming's disclosure statute for severed estates, W.S. § 34-1-151, covers minerals and wind on the land it applies to, and it does not list pore space. A 2025 bill, House Bill 193, would have required every conveyance to say whether pore space was included, and it died in committee. A 2024 bill, Senate File 43, would have stopped future severances, and it failed introduction. So the 2008 rule stands as written, no form in the transaction has to flag pore space for you, and the check is yours to make.

The deed is where the "explicitly excluded" case lives. Before closing, please ask your attorney to read the draft deed for any reservation or exception of pore space, storage rights, or subsurface rights beyond the minerals. If the seller means to keep the pore space, that language has to be in the deed you accept. If not, the deed should be silent on it, and your attorney can ask for clean wording while the contract is still open.

Please also ask the seller, in writing, whether they or any earlier owner have signed a pore space lease, a storage agreement, an option, or an easement for injection or monitoring wells. Please ask whether anyone has approached them about a storage project. Before a project injects anything, the operator can ask the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission under W.S. § 35-11-316 to unitize the storage site, which pools the pore space interests in the unit area (Title 35 statutes). Under the Commission's rules, that order does not take effect until owners of at least eighty percent of the pore space storage capacity in the unit area have signed or ratified the plan (055-3 Wyo. Code R. § 3-43). A seller who has been asked to sign a unitization plan knows a project is coming, and you want to know it while the price is still open.

Pore space and your mortgage

At closing, the lender's title insurer issues a loan policy, and the title commitment is the first draft of it. The underwriter sees the same Schedule B exceptions you do. The appraiser describes the property as it is, so a monitoring well or an access road gets written up, and on acreage the appraisal decides more than anything else. If the recorded document limits the pore space holder to one described corner, the rest of the land stays as the appraiser sees it today. If it allows broad access, a well pad or a road could go anywhere the document permits, and that is worth an attorney's read before closing.

Once your contract is accepted and the title commitment arrives, please send me the complete title commitment and copies of each recorded document behind its Schedule B exceptions, all pages. Your Wyoming pre-approval comes earlier, before the offer, and covers your income, debts and credit.

The order I'd work in

1. Before you write the offer, please ask the listing agent, in writing, whether the seller owns the pore space and whether any lease, storage agreement, option or easement has been signed or recorded.
2. In the offer, you'll want an inspection period long enough for the records to come back. Please ask the title company for the full commitment and the recorded documents the day the contract is accepted.
3. Please ask a Wyoming real estate attorney to read any pore space deed, lease or memorandum, especially the holder's right to use the surface, and to read the draft deed for any exclusion of pore space.
4. Please send me the complete title commitment and the recorded documents, all pages, so the title review and the appraisal work from the same facts you do.
5. After closing, please confirm with the title company that your deed has been recorded with the county clerk.

Common mistakes on Wyoming land

The client read a mineral reservation as covering everything underground. In Wyoming a mineral deed only carries the pore space if it says pore space, so a parcel with severed minerals usually still has its pore space with the surface.

The client skipped past a recorded storage memorandum on Schedule B. That document fixes how much of the surface the pore space holder may use, and it tells you whether a well pad is possible on your ground.

An illustration, so the sequence is clear

Dates below are made up to show the mechanism. They are not a quote, an estimate, or anything that happened.

Say you go under contract on a 160-acre Wyoming parcel with a home and a hay meadow, on a thirty-day inspection period and a fifty-day close.

Day  1    Contract accepted. Title commitment and recorded documents requested.
Day  8    Commitment back. Schedule B shows a 1961 mineral reservation and a
          2023 memorandum of a pore space lease recorded by the prior owner.
Day 14    Attorney reads the memorandum. Surface use is limited to a described
          two-acre corner by the county road, with no access across the meadow.
Day 18    Price and terms renegotiated with the lease and the two acres in view.
          Draft deed reviewed; no pore space exclusion.
Day 50    Closing. Deed recorded with the county clerk the same week.

Now run the same parcel with nobody requesting anything until the lender's title review raises the memorandum on day thirty-three. The inspection period has closed, so the lease can no longer be used to renegotiate the price.

Your next step on Wyoming land

If you are shopping for land in Wyoming, start by knowing what you can comfortably spend. Run your numbers and you will see rates for your scenario, your debt ratio and closing costs priced for your Wyoming county. No credit pull, no account, and nobody calls you.

Once you are ready to write an offer a seller will take seriously, get pre-approved for a Wyoming mortgage so that your income, debts and credit are reviewed rather than estimated, the way a documented pre-approval works. No letter from anyone is a loan commitment, and final approval depends on the property, the appraisal and full underwriting. The Wyoming mortgage guide covers the rest of the state's closing mechanics.

Common questions

Who owns the pore space under land in Wyoming?

The surface owner, unless a recorded document says otherwise. W.S. § 34-1-152(a) vests ownership of all pore space in all strata below the surface lands and waters of Wyoming in the owners of the surface above it. Pore space can be severed and conveyed separately, the way mineral interests are, and a mineral deed does not carry pore space with it unless the deed explicitly says so.

Does the pore space come with the deed when I buy land in Wyoming?

Under W.S. § 34-1-152(b), a conveyance of the surface is a conveyance of the pore space in all strata below it, unless the pore space was previously severed from the surface or the deed explicitly excludes it. The title commitment's Schedule B shows whether an earlier severance, lease or storage memorandum is in the county records, and the deed itself shows whether the seller is keeping it.

Can a carbon storage company use my land in Wyoming if someone else owns the pore space?

Only to the extent the recorded document allows. W.S. § 34-1-152 requires every recorded document transferring pore space rights to describe the scope of any right to use the surface. It gives the pore space owner no right to use the surface beyond what a properly recorded document sets out. A Wyoming real estate attorney can read that surface use language for you before you agree on a price.

Does owning the pore space in Wyoming let me stop an oil company from drilling through it?

No. The 2009 amendment to W.S. § 34-1-152 keeps the mineral owner's long-standing rights in place. It says the separately owned minerals come first over pore space whether the pore space belongs to the surface owner or to someone else. Your protections against an oil and gas operator come from a different law, W.S. § 30-5-402.

Estimates and educational information are not a loan approval or commitment to lend.