Overview

It has often been said that, under English common law, a landowner’s rights extend over everything to the heavens above and to the centre of the earth beneath his land. However, those rights have long been limited so that landowners’ rights over the airspace above land, which has many foreseeable users, are restricted only to the portion of airspace that a landowner needs to protect his reasonable enjoyment and purposeful use of the land at ground level.

Statute also governs the ownership of certain natural resources found beneath land, such as oil, coal and gold, reserving title to such assets, to ensure that they can be exploited only by the Crown.

Bocardo SA v Star Energy UK Onshore Ltd and another, a case involving a landlord’s claim for trespass against an oil company drilling under his land, raised some interesting legal questions about access rights related to ownership on the land and the strata below it. The case has important implications for both oil companies and landlords.

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