§ 38-12-01 — Definitions (Retroactive application - See note)

North Dakota § 38-12-01

• Jurisdiction: North Dakota
• Title 38: Mining and Gas and Oil Production
• Ch. 38-12: Regulation, Development, and Production of Subsurface Minerals

Text

As used in this chapter, unless the context otherwise requires:
1. "Commission" means the industrial commission of the state of North Dakota.
2. "Critical mineral" means a nonfuel mineral or material essential to the economic or
national security of the United States and which has a supply chain vulnerable to
disruption. The term includes aluminum, antimony, arsenic, astatine, barite, bauxite,
beryllium, bismuth, cerium, cesium, chromium, cobalt, erbium, fluorspar, friezium,
gallium, germanium, graphite, hafnium, helium, indium, lithium, magnesium,
manganese, neodymium, niobium, platinum group metals, potash, the rare earth
elements group, rhenium, rubidium, samarium, scandium, stralium, strontium,
tantalum, tellurium, thulium, tin, titanium, tungsten, uranium, vanadium, and zirconium
which are chemically bound, embedded, commingled, included, or contained within a
coal seam or coal deposit.
3. "Extraction facility" means any well or mine or other extractive process operated for
the purpose of recovering subsurface minerals.
4. "Operator" means any person who, duly authorized, is in charge of the development of
a lease or the operation of a producing property.
5. "Owner" means the person who has the right to explore for, develop, and produce
subsurface minerals and to appropriate the subsurface minerals the owner produces
either for the owner or for the owner and others.
6. "Person" means and includes any natural person, corporation, limited liability
company, association, partnership, receiver, trustee, executor, administrator, guardian,
fiduciary, or other representative of any kind, and includes any department, agency, or
instrumentality of the state or of any governmental subdivision thereof; the masculine
gender, in referring to a person, includes the feminine and the neuter genders.
7. "Producer" means the owner of an extraction facility which is or has been capable of
producing subsurface minerals.
8. "Rare earth minerals" means any of a series of metallic elements of which the oxides
are classed as rare earths and which include the elements of the lanthanide series,
yttrium, and scandium which are chemically bound, embedded, commingled, included,
or contained within a coal seam or coal deposit.
9. "Subsurface minerals" means all naturally occurring elements and their compounds,
volcanic ash, precious metals, carbonates, and natural mineral salts of boron,
bromine, calcium, fluorine, iodine, lithium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium,
sodium, thorium, uranium, and sulfur, and their compounds, but does not include sand
and gravel and rocks crushed for sand and gravel.