Texas Administrative Code
Title 31 - NATURAL RESOURCES AND CONSERVATION
Part 1 - GENERAL LAND OFFICE
Chapter 13 - LAND RESOURCES
Subchapter E - VACANCIES
Section 13.62 - Terms of Sale or Lease by the School Land Board

(a) The board shall set the conditions for each sale or lease of vacant land.

(b) The board, in its sole discretion, may reserve to the State of Texas for the use and benefit of the permanent school fund all oil, gas, coal, lignite, sulphur, and other mineral substances from which sulphur may be derived or produced, salt, potash, uranium, thorium, groundwater, wind, solar and geothermal resources, and all other minerals in and under the vacant land and by whatever method recovered, as well as the right to lease such minerals and the right of ingress and egress to explore for and produce the same.

(c) The board may reserve a royalty in a mineral interest purchased by an applicant in a percentage that the board may determine in its sole discretion.

(d) When leasing vacant land, the board may consider the interests of persons who currently hold or previously held mineral interests in adjoining or surrounding lands when determining the fair distribution of the purchase or leasing rights in the mineral estate. Where there is no good faith claimant, the board may enter into agreements with persons holding mineral interests in adjoining or surrounding lands prior to the vacancy determination in lieu of offering the mineral estate for lease to others.

(e) The board shall recognize a good-faith claimant's preferential right to purchase the surface and lease the minerals in vacant land by offering the good-faith claimant the first opportunity to purchase and lease under terms and conditions and at a price set by the board.

(f) An applicant's preferential right to purchase or lease an interest in vacant land is secondary to the preferential right of good-faith claimants. The board may sell the surface estate and lease the minerals to the applicant under the same conditions as to a good-faith claimant. If neither the good-faith claimant nor the applicant exercises the right to purchase or lease all of the vacant land or any portion thereof within sixty (60) days of the date on which the application for purchase or lease is sent to the good-faith claimant or applicant by the agency, then the agency file shall be endorsed, "surveyed, unsold school land" and may be sold and leased in the manner prescribed by law for sale and lease.