Cite as: 526 U. S. 865 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
It may be true, nonetheless, that the right to mine the coal implies the right to release gas incident to coal mining where it is necessary and reasonable to do so. The right to dissipate the CBM gas where reasonable and necessary to mine the coal does not, however, imply the ownership of the gas in the first instance. Rather, it simply reflects the established common-law right of the owner of one mineral estate to use, and even damage, a neighboring estate as necessary and reasonable to the extraction of his own minerals. See, e. g., Williams v. Gibson, 84 Ala. 228, 4 So. 350 (1888); Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, 6 American Law of Mining § 200.04 (2d ed. 1997). Given that split estates were already common at the time the 1909 and 1910 Acts were passed, see, e. g., Chartiers Block Coal Co. v. Mellon, 152 Pa. 286, 25 A. 597 (1893), and that the common law has proved adequate to the task of resolving the resulting conflicts between estates, there is no reason to think that the prospect of a split estate would have deterred Congress from reserving only the coal.
Were a case to arise in which there are two commercially valuable estates and one is to be damaged in the course of extracting the other, a dispute might result, but it could be resolved in the ordinary course of negotiation or adjudication. That is not the issue before us, however. The question is one of ownership, not of damage or injury.
In all events, even were we to construe the coal reservation to encompass CBM gas, a split estate would result. The United States concedes (and the Tribe does not dispute) that once the gas originating in the coal formation migrates to surrounding rock formations it belongs to the natural gas, rather than the coal, estate. See Brief for Federal Respondents 35; Brief for Respondent Southern Ute Indian Tribe 3, n. 4. Natural gas from other sources may also exist in the lands at issue. Including the CBM gas in the coal reservation would, therefore, create a split gas estate that would be at least as difficult to administer as a split
879
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