N.M. Stat. » Chapter 70 — Oil and Gas
New Mexico Statutes

N.M. Stat. § 70-12-1 (2026)

Short title

✓ current as of May 2026
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This act [70-12-1 to 70-12-10 NMSA 1978] may be cited as the "Surface Owners Protection Act".

History: Laws 2007, ch. 5, § 1.

ANNOTATIONS

Effective dates. — Laws 2007, ch. 5, § 11 made the act effective July 1, 2007.

Relocation of access road. — Where the oil and gas lessee’s existing access road was washed out by the adjacent river and made impassable; the lease granted the lessee authority to utilize the surface property as was reasonably necessary to carry out its business; and there was a strong likelihood that erosion would continue in the future if the river bank were rebuilt and the existing road repaired, the court did not abuse it discretion when it authorized the lessee to relocate the portion of the eroded road in an alignment that had the least impact on the landowner’s surface rights and ordered the lessee to compensate the landowner on the basis of the value of hay that the landowner would have grown on the area occupied by the relocated road. XTO Energy, Inc. v. Armenta, 2008-NMCA-078, 144 N.M. 212, 185 P.3d 383.

Notes of Decisions
Cited in 3 cases (1 in the last 5 years), 2015–2021 · leading case: SWEPI, LP v. Mora Cnty., 81 F. Supp. 3d 1075 (D.N.M. 2015).
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SWEPI, LP v. Mora Cnty., 81 F. Supp. 3d 1075 (D.N.M. 2015). · cites it 2× “The Surface Owners Protection Act, N.M. Stat. Ann. §§ 70-12-1 through 70-12-10, provides protections to surface owners, but the definition of "surface owner” is limited to the "person who holds legal or equitable title .”
Woody Inv., LLC v. Sovereign Eagle, LLC, 2015 NMCA 111 (N.M. Ct. App. 2015). · cites it 2× “{1} This is a case that involves claims brought under the Surface Owners Protection Act (SOPA), NMSA 1978, §§ 70-12-1 to -10 (2007), and the common law as a result of geophysical seismic surveys conducted on lands owned or leased by Plaintiffs.”
Zia Land & Water Conservation, LLC v. Marathon Oil Permian LLC (D.N.M. 2021). · cites it 2× “See New Mexico Surface Owner Protection Act, NMSA § 70-12-1 et seq. Defendants removed this case from state court on the basis of diversity jurisdiction.”
Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.