SB 235 Utah Senate · 2025 General Session

Natural Resources Ownership

SB 235 clarifies that ownership of geothermal resources (underground heat energy) follows surface land ownership in Utah, meaning landowners typically own the rights to resources beneath their property unless those rights were previously reserved or sold. It specifically excludes school and institutional trust lands from this rule, maintaining separate ownership for those properties. The bill amends Utah Code Section 73-22-4 to make these changes and adjust technical language, with no new funding or major procedural changes. This directly affects landowners and entities managing geothermal resources across Utah, particularly regarding property rights under their land. The bill takes effect on May 7, 2025.

Issues: ✓ Energy

Bill status in committee 1 of 4 stages cleared

Introduction

Feb 2025

Committee Review

Floor Vote

Governor

Introduced Feb 6, 2025 Last action Mar 8, 2025

Maddy AI version diff · 1 comparison

What changed between versions

Introduced → Substitute #1 · 5 edits

MODERATE

The bill clarifies that geothermal resources belong to landowners rather than being treated as water rights, adds an exception for school and institutional trust lands, and includes minor formatting and wording adjustments throughout the text.

Scope change

The bill now explicitly excludes school and institutional trust lands from the general ownership rule, and modifies how the chapter applies to federal and Indian lands in unit agreements.

ELIGIBILITY

Added a new subsection (1)(c) that exempts school and institutional trust lands from the rule that surface landowners own underlying geothermal resources.

TECHNICAL

Changed the text in subsection (2) from 'deem consider' to just 'consider' for clarity when federal or Indian lands are committed to unit agreements.

Replaced the redundant phrase '[State of Utah] state' with just 'state' in subsection (2) for grammatical consistency.

Replaced the word '[these]' with 'these' in subsection (2) to remove unnecessary brackets.

Changed 'House Sponsor: LONG TITLE' to 'House Sponsor:' with no name listed, indicating the House sponsor information was removed or not yet assigned.

Floor votes

How they voted

No floor votes recorded yet.

Full legislative history

Actions timeline

Total actions

Key actions

Committee

Feb 7, 2025

Committee

Senate/ to standing committee

upper

Feb 6, 2025

Introduced

Senate/ 1st reading (Introduced)

upper

1 primary · 0 co-sponsors