Texas Land & Mineral Owners Association

TLMA was created in 1999 by 54 founding members who wanted to create an entity which would maintain and strengthen property rights for all Texas and royalty owners while working to protect our land and water resources from the poorly regulated oil exploration industry. Today we have over 1,200 annual members from across the state.

TLMA enjoys the support of organizations such as Rice University and the Kenedy Memorial Foundation and companies such as the Texas Pacific Land Trust.

Our members are concerned about two broad areas of issues:

Royalty Payment Accuracy

During the 1990s the Texas Supreme Court issued rulings which adversely affected royalty owners.
Royalty owners continue to lack information to determine the accuracy of their payments
Invalid monthly reporting of oil and gas production by oil operators to the Texas Railroad Commission.

Texas' Land and Water Resources

There are 356,000 oil and gas wells in Texas.
Over 110,000 wells are fully depleted, many abandoned and need to be plugged.
Thousands of old idle production facilities, gas plants, and compressor stations must be dismantled and remediated.
In 2003, statewide officials reported 250 cases of groundwater contamination located in 85 Texas counties as a result of oil and gas operations.
Annual well plugging by the oil industry has declined 50% in the last ten years.

Protect Our Aquifers

Abandoned wells can have pipes that may corrode, leaking pollutants straight into aquifers.
Disintegrating pipes move saltwater from deeper formations directly into shallow freshwater aquifers.