# Who owns UT’s oil land—and who gets to spend the money?

*Research cut-off: October 30, 2026. Fiscal years end August 31. Audited results, approved budgets and current map records are identified separately.*

**The land is held by the State of Texas for the Permanent University Fund. Private companies acquire mineral leasehold interests; University Lands administers the estate; UTIMCO invests the financial proceeds. UT Austin is a beneficiary of this arrangement, with a particular claim on its distributions. It does not own a freely spendable oil fortune.** [1][2]

The important structure is a succession of claims. A company acquires an interest in minerals. The public retains royalties and other contractual rights. Mineral receipts become permanent capital. A limited distribution becomes available to two university systems. Debt service comes first; operating allocations follow. Each step changes who can claim the money and when.

Two findings make the familiar story substantially more interesting. First, a 1926 court decision prevented the legislature from spending oil receipts as they arrived: extracting minerals was a disposal of capital, and the money had to replace that capital. Second, in May 2025 the regents changed the default payout formula to 7% of a five-year average financial asset value. The approved distribution rose 46% the following fiscal year, while Austin’s initial allocation rose about 2%. Geology creates the resource; law and board decisions govern its conversion into university spending. [3][4][5]

## 1. What the existing explanations establish—and where they stop

This investigation began with the coverage, rather than treating the subject as undiscovered.

| Existing work | What it already establishes | What needs another layer |
|---|---|---|
| UT System explainers and its 2015 issue brief | Mineral receipts versus surface receipts; the PUF/AUF distinction; debt and operating restrictions | Current payout policy, reconciled annual flows and actual campus spending |
| Texas Tribune/Reveal, 2017 | The money trail and the competition between system administration and student benefits | A current reconstruction using accounts on consistent bases |
| Historical and constitutional scholarship | The grants, A&M’s claim, the split and changing eligibility | How those inherited rights operate across today’s institutions |
| University Lands’ reports and public maps | Production tiers, leases, wells and contract terms | A reproducible extract, with subsidiaries, overlapping rights and missing fields kept visible |

The Tribune already asked where the oil money went. UT’s 2015 brief even compared capital funding per student. The contribution here is the join: twelve years of audited fund flows, the revised payout rule, institutional eligibility, certified enrollment, Austin’s expenditure schedule and a complete extract of the published lease and well attributes. [6][7]

Some common explanations are stale. The Texas State Historical Association entry describes an interest-and-dividend system that does not reflect the modern total-return rules. UT’s general explainer says distributions are usually 5% or less; its governing rule now specifies a 7% default on a different, averaged denominator. A reader can understand the old mechanism and still miss the current financial policy. [4][8][9]

## 2. Public land, private mineral interests

University Lands describes its main estate as approximately **2.1 million surface acres across 19 West Texas counties**. The public title, the mineral lease, the operator and the corporate parent are different answers to different ownership questions. An executed lease examined for this project identifies the lessor as the State of Texas, acting through University Lands or its designees. [1][10]

| Position | What it controls or receives |
|---|---|
| State / public PUF estate | The dedicated land and retained property and contract claims |
| UT Board of Regents | Fiduciary and governing responsibility for the fund |
| University Lands and statutory leasing authorities | Administration and leasing of the estate |
| Private lessees and working-interest owners | Defined mineral property interests, development rights and associated obligations |
| Well operator | Day-to-day production; it need not own every working interest |
| UTIMCO | Management of the financial investment portfolio |
| Eligible institutions | Legally defined capital or operating benefits |

Calling the companies mere renters understates their interests. Texas oil leases can convey an interest in real property. Calling them owners of “UT’s land” overstates those interests. A company name on a well is not a complete ownership record, and a field called `CurrentOwner` in the lease map identifies a leasehold owner rather than automatically displacing the public estate. [1][3]

### Which companies produce the oil and gas?

University Lands’ fiscal 2025 report identifies **Diamondback Energy, Continental Resources, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Sequitur Energy Resources** as a group responsible for approximately **50% of production**. Another ten producers account for approximately 40%. It does not publish individual shares within those tiers. That is the strongest supported answer to “who pumps the most.” [10]

Diamondback, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips have publicly traded parents. Continental’s March 2026 SEC filing identifies Harold Hamm, family members and affiliated entities as its private owners. Sequitur is private; its complete current ownership percentages were not established. The accompanying corporate crosswalk distinguishes the fiscal 2025 producer names from corporate ownership researched in October 2026. [11]

The public GIS looks much more fragmented. My October 30 extract contains 3,911 mapped lease/depth records and 28,815 historical or current well-zone records. Restricting the latter to the official “Producing” status yields **9,880 distinct API well identifiers and 222 operator-name strings**. Those are administrative names, including subsidiaries and legacy labels, rather than 222 independently verified ultimate parents. [12]

The extract is complete for the published tables, not a claim to have reconstructed every contract or beneficial owner. Leases can overlap by depth; 1,788 mapped records are flagged as depth-severed. Two wells have multiple producing operator labels across zones. Those ambiguities remain in the data instead of being resolved through guesses.

I also tested the production portal as a route to exact company rankings. Its regulatory-lease histories have a different membership from the GIS and can extend decades before the current operator existed. Without allocation fractions linking those regulatory units to University Lands’ mineral interests, multiplying or summing the portal volumes would manufacture precision. The published 50% producer tier survives that test; an exact parent-level league table does not.

### Are the companies getting unusually favorable leases?

A verified example is Hibernia Energy IV’s lease 121606, effective October 18, 2023: 204.780 Reagan County acres, a three-year primary term and a 25% gross royalty free of production and post-production deductions. That is a contract observation, not a universal rate. The current template leaves the royalty percentage to be filled in, and the fiscal 2025 portfolio average was 21.25%. [1][10][13]

The difference between 25% and 21.25% does not establish a subsidy. A valid private-lease comparison must match geology, depths, vintage, bonuses, valuation and deduction clauses, development requirements and retained acreage. This research did not establish that matched sample. The claim that the state gives producers a bargain remains unproven; so does the opposite claim that it consistently extracts better terms than nearby private owners.

## 3. The court decision that made an oil discovery into permanent capital

The university land dedication began before statehood. The 1876 Constitution and an 1883 grant supplied the major West Texas acreage. Land that looked disappointing for agriculture became extraordinarily valuable after oil discoveries, most famously Santa Rita in 1923. “Worthless” describes a judgment about anticipated commercial use, not an objective account of all the land’s value or prior inhabitants. [8][14]

The less familiar event came three years later.

In *State ex rel. Moody v. Hatcher* (1926), the court considered **$1,594,562.15** paid by mineral lessees. A 1925 statute had directed the receipts into an available building fund. The court held that the money belonged in the permanent fund: oil was part of the land, and removing it disposed of part of the endowment’s capital. A royalty label could not turn a sale of an exhaustible asset into ordinary recurring rent. The conflicting statute failed. [3][15]

That distinction explains the pipeline. Grazing can produce another year’s rent from the same land. A sold barrel cannot be sold again. The constitutional arrangement substitutes financial capital for the extracted minerals, then permits a governed distribution from the accumulated portfolio. The 1999 total-return amendment later expanded the investment-return basis available for distributions; today’s system is not limited to interest and dividends. [7]

This also refines the historical research still needed. High Country News’ *Land-Grab Universities* demonstrates how to connect endowments to individual parcels and dispossession. Its federal Morrill-grant dataset is not interchangeable with Texas’s state-created PUF grants. A parcel-specific account of the PUF’s earlier title and Indigenous dispossession would require its own land-office and historical reconstruction. The present lease extract documents current contractual interests, not that deeper chain of title. [16]

## 4. Follow the money through the accounts

The PUF is the permanent estate and invested capital. The **Available University Fund**, or AUF, is the spendable stream. Mineral receipts enter the PUF; surface receipts take a different accounting route into the AUF. Some surface income—water, pipelines, easements and disposal-related activity—also depends on oil development, so “surface” does not mean “independent of petroleum.” [7][10]

The economic flow is:

1. Private producers pay the public estate’s royalties and other mineral receipts.
2. Those receipts add to the financial PUF, which also earns or loses investment returns.
3. The regents authorize an investment distribution to the AUF; net surface income joins it.
4. The divisible AUF is allocated two-thirds to UT System and one-third to A&M System.
5. Each system services its PUF debt before making the permitted operating allocations. [2][7]

### What twelve audited years show

I reconstructed every annual roll-forward from fiscal 2014 through fiscal 2025, using six paired-year audited statements. Each annual identity and the opening-to-closing continuity check reconciles at the reports’ published precision.

| Financial PUF bridge, September 2013–August 2025 | Nominal $ billions |
|---|---:|
| Opening financial net assets | 14.853 |
| New mineral contributions | +14.504 |
| Investment income and gains, net of reported investment expenses | +24.548 |
| Land administration and other reported administrative expenses | −0.247 |
| Investment distributions to the AUF | −13.366 |
| Closing financial net assets | **40.291** |

This is an accounting bridge, not a causal decomposition. Earlier mineral receipts financed investments that later earned returns. Gains include valuation changes as well as realized income. It would be misleading to assign a definitive percentage of the growth to “oil” and the remainder to “Wall Street.” The data do establish that financial-market results are a major part of the mechanism. [17]

Fiscal 2022 supplies a useful counterexample to the simple oil-boom story. Mineral contributions were $2.125 billion, but net financial results after the reported expenses were approximately negative $2.043 billion. After the $1.162 billion distribution, the fund shrank about $1.081 billion. Strong mineral receipts do not guarantee a growing financial endowment. One year also does not establish that the portfolio reliably hedges oil. [18]

### The fiscal 2025 distribution

| Stage | $ millions |
|---|---:|
| Investment payout from PUF | 1,524.925 |
| Surface and other income, less divisible expenses | +141.145 |
| Net divisible AUF | **1,666.070** |
| A&M System’s one-third | 555.357 |
| UT System’s two-thirds | 1,110.713 |
| Interest on UT’s AUF balances | +63.653 |
| UT resources available | **1,174.366** |

UT recorded $396.044 million for debt service, $136.397 million for direct campus support through system activities, $61.015 million for system administration, $70 million for system initiatives and $524.967 million for Austin programs and Austin-managed technology. Total uses exceeded the year’s resources by $14.057 million, covered by balances. These are system-level uses and transfers, not all campus expenditures in the same year. [5]

Debt changes the time profile: eligible campuses can build now against future AUF receipts. Bondholders have a prior claim on that stream, not an unrestricted mortgage on the West Texas acres. The constitutional ordinary 7% distribution ceiling and the restriction on increasing distributions after a failed purchasing-power test both contain a debt-service exception. The commitment to past construction can therefore outrank future operating flexibility. [2][19]

## 5. The recent change was a payout decision

On May 8, 2025, the regents changed the default distribution rule to **7% of the preceding twenty quarterly financial NAV observations, ending in February**, unless the board approves otherwise or the Constitution prevents it. This is 7% of an averaged financial base, not 7% of all land and financial wealth or necessarily 7% of the current investment balance. [4]

| Fiscal year | Investment distribution | Basis |
|---|---:|---|
| 2025 | $1.525 billion | Audited distribution |
| 2026 | $2.230 billion | Approved May 2025 |
| 2027 | $2.451 billion | Approved May 2026 |

The first increase was **46.2%**. The fiscal 2027 amount is **60.7% above fiscal 2025**. The 2027 calculation used a roughly $35.0 billion averaged base. Against the separately reported, preliminary August 2026 financial NAV of $45.904 billion, that payout is approximately 5.34%. The two percentages answer different questions. [20][21][22]

An enlarged system distribution does not dictate Austin’s immediate increase. Its fiscal 2025 transfer was $524.967 million; the initial fiscal 2026 financing allocation was $535.967 million, up 2.1%. The December 2025 system plan also reserved $390.458 million for board-directed activities. That was a budget reservation awaiting decisions, not evidence that the entire amount had been spent or permanently withheld from campuses. [5]

Austin’s fiscal 2027 approved AUF financing subsequently rose to $640.675 million, 19.5% above the fiscal 2026 figure. This sequence is the important result: the oil-to-campus pipeline contains a substantial allocation decision after the payout decision. [23]

## 6. What Austin actually spends

For the latest reconciled actual year, Austin’s reported AUF application was **$498.677 million**. Its system transfer, its original campus budget and its actual application are different measures; none should be silently substituted for another.

| Austin fiscal 2025 reported application, grouped for readability | $ millions |
|---|---:|
| Instruction, research and public-service categories | 173.080 |
| Faculty recruitment, undergraduate outreach/support and graduate support | 87.357 |
| Institutional accountability and public connections | 173.682 |
| Dell Medical School | 46.653 |
| School of Civic Leadership | 2.856 |
| Texas Advance Commitment | 6.006 |
| System technology | 9.043 |
| **Total** | **498.677** |

The large institutional category includes facilities, public safety, IT, finance and the provost, alongside communications and development. It cannot be equated with executive compensation. Likewise, the Texas Advance Commitment line is not total student aid: other categories contain scholarships, fellowships or assistantships. The detailed original rows are preserved in the workbook. [5]

For the current approved fiscal 2027 budget, AUF supplies **12.3% of Austin’s $5.227 billion all-funds expenditure subtotal**, before the budget’s reconciling adjustments. Its financing schedule assigns $586.975 million to operations, $20 million to Dell, $17 million to Texas Advance Commitment, $5 million to Civic Leadership and $11.7 million across security, mental-health crisis support, research cyberinfrastructure and IT. These are plans, not completed spending. [23]

The fund is consequently substantial without being Austin’s entire budget. It also cannot be followed from a particular barrel to a particular professor’s paycheck using these public summaries. Once receipts become invested capital and distributions enter pooled budgets, the checkable trail is between accounts, authorizations and expenditure categories.

## 7. Who benefits—and what “gets nothing” obscures

The two-thirds/one-third division emerged from a historical accommodation of A&M’s claim as a branch of the constitutionally contemplated university. The 1931 split was not a formula designed around today’s enrollment. Prairie View’s modern constitutional operating position dates to the 1984 changes, but it had received some benefits earlier; describing 1984 as its first-ever access would erase that history. [2][14]

The current hierarchy has three levels:

| Access | Institutions |
|---|---|
| Direct operating support and capital access | UT Austin; Texas A&M’s university group, including Galveston and the Health Science Center; Prairie View A&M. The two system administrations also have operating eligibility. |
| Capital access without the same direct university operating entitlement | Other eligible UT institutions; Tarleton, A&M–Central Texas, A&M–San Antonio and eligible A&M agencies |
| Outside PUF eligibility | Other public-university systems and specified regional A&M institutions, which can have other state funding entitlements |

The accompanying institutional table covers all 37 general-academic reporting rows in the coordinating board’s enrollment file. Fifteen have PUF capital eligibility. Health institutions and agencies require separate treatment. “37 rows” is not “37 independently chartered universities”: the file separately reports Galveston and Sul Ross Rio Grande. [24]

An especially revealing contrast is **Stephen F. Austin versus Victoria**. SFA’s 2023 legislation abolished the previous institution and created its UT successor, expressly conferring participation under the constitutional provision for later-created institutions. A&M–Victoria, despite joining A&M in 2025, remains on the Higher Education Fund side, with a statutory annual allocation of $6.030 million. System membership alone does not carry the financing right; the institution’s legal history matters. [25][26]

### A defensible per-student comparison

I divided fiscal 2025 reported direct AUF application or expenses by consistently scoped, state-certified Fall 2024 headcount:

| University group | Recorded direct AUF use | Comparison headcount | Dollars per fall student |
|---|---:|---:|---:|
| UT Austin, including Dell | $498.677m | 53,864 | **$9,258** |
| Texas A&M, including HSC and Galveston | $314.093m | 76,530 | **$4,104** |
| Prairie View A&M | $34.413m | 9,821 | **$3,504** |

These are calculated scale measures, not checks received by students or estimates of educational benefit. The numerator includes research, medical and other activities; expenses can draw on prior-year balances. A&M’s reporting classifications differ from UT’s. Galveston is included in the A&M pool because it has operating eligibility but no separate operating expenditure schedule in that report. The denominator uses certified reporting components rather than a larger, differently scoped press-release enrollment. [24][27]

Capital must remain separate. UT attributes system debt service to campuses using an estimate based on twenty years of capital allocations. A&M reports attribution by member and bond issue. Adding these to the operating comparison without explanation would turn unlike measures into a spurious all-in ranking. Adding new bond proceeds and the debt service on those bonds would also double-count financing stages. [5][27]

Zero direct operating entitlement is not zero benefit. Centrally administered aid, shared services and other system programs can reach additional institutions. A&M’s reporting describes such programs for regional universities, including campuses outside PUF capital eligibility. Nor does PUF exclusion mean exclusion from public support: HEF and the Texas University Fund are separate mechanisms. [28]

Whether the historical split is fair requires a stated objective: research capacity, access, financial need, regional development or equal dollars per student would imply different allocations. What the records establish is narrower and firm: the split does not automatically adjust to those measures. The legal entitlement precedes the annual assessment of need.

## 8. How exposed is Austin to the oil price?

The answer has three time scales: current cash receipts, the averaged investment payout and the subsequent campus allocation.

University Lands reported 20.120 million **net royalty barrels of oil** for fiscal 2025. Consider a one-year $10-per-barrel reduction in realized price at that fixed volume. The illustrative royalty-value shortfall is:

**20.120 million barrels × $10 = $201.2 million.** [10]

That does not automatically cut an already approved AUF payout by $201.2 million. Under the current formula, if a constant $201.2 million NAV shortfall appears in four of the twenty quarterly observations, the calculated annual investment payout falls by **$2.817 million across both systems**. If it appears in all twenty, the difference is **$14.084 million**. UT System’s corresponding two-thirds amounts are $1.878 million and $9.389 million. Austin’s allocation remains a separate decision. [4]

This is a transparent sensitivity, not a forecast. It holds production, gas and NGL receipts, bonuses, surface receipts and investment results fixed; it excludes compounding and payout feedback. A persistent annual royalty loss would accumulate a larger asset shortfall than this one-year example. The calendar also matters because the formula uses the prior February’s valuation window.

The result explains the insulation without pretending it is independence. Austin’s budget is buffered from a short-lived oil-price move by accumulated investments, averaging and allocation choices. Persistent lower royalty income changes future capital accumulation. Financial-market shocks affect the larger investment pool. Oil-related surface receipts supply a more direct route to AUF income. Calling 12.3% of Austin’s budget “oil-price exposure” would combine all of those mechanisms into a misleading single percentage.

## 9. The land is valued—but it sits outside the headline investment balance

An initial hypothesis did not survive the consolidated-account check: the remaining land and mineral wealth is not simply unvalued.

UTIMCO’s fiscal 2025 financial NAV was $40.291 billion and expressly excluded the PUF lands. UT System separately reported **$10.632 billion of PUF land value**, including mineral and surface interests, versus **$10.391 billion in fiscal 2024**. Its valuation uses a third-party reserve study, future royalty cash flows discounted at 10%, year-end commodity prices and separate surface values. It is classified as Level 3, reflecting significant unobservable valuation inputs. [29][30]

The valuation’s existence changes the conclusion. A claim that extraction must be reducing the reported value of the remaining estate fails this two-year check: its reported land value increased by approximately $240 million. That increase does not identify the separate effects of prices, drilling, discoveries, reserve revisions and depletion, or prove that every valuation assumption will be realized.

The distinction that remains is between **the financial purchasing-power test and a broader assessment of the public estate**. The 2026 distribution approval’s ten-year test includes a positive mineral-receipt component of 4.65 percentage points within reported real growth of 6.68%. New mineral receipts add financial capital; the test does not separately revalue the remaining mineral estate alongside that addition. [21]

This is a boundary of the test, not an accounting error or evidence of a constitutional breach. A complete intergenerational assessment would put the financial portfolio, the separately valued land, distributions and relevant claims on consistent bases, then test alternative commodity prices, reserves and discount rates. The existing land valuation supplies a starting point. It should not be silently added to a differently scoped net-position figure or treated as cash available for campus appropriations.

## What the evidence supports

The answer to ownership is public dedication with private mineral interests and multiple downstream claims. The answer to spending is a governed sequence, ending in a campus expenditure schedule rather than a direct oil-company payment to Austin.

The strongest findings here are the current payout-policy change, the separation between system distributions and campus allocations, the actual scale and uses of Austin’s support, and the way legal institutional history determines access. They rest on explicit rules and reconciled public accounts. The operator inventory is also reproducible, while exact corporate production shares remain bounded by the underlying data.

Several attractive claims did not survive: that an oil boom necessarily grows the fund; that 25% is the universal royalty; that every non-Austin campus gets nothing; that a reported aid line equals all student support; or that excluding land from investment NAV means nobody values it.

The records that would most improve or change the conclusions are concrete: dated mineral and regulatory-unit allocation factors for company production shares; matched private leases for a terms comparison; campus ledger and carryforward reconciliations for a closer expenditure trace; harmonized multi-year spending and enrollment for benefit comparisons; and the reserve study’s assumptions and sensitivities for long-term wealth preservation. None requires pretending the public record already says more than it does.

## Sources and reproducibility

The companion workbook contains the financial bridge, AUF waterfall, Austin spending, institutional eligibility and enrollment, operator tables and an editable oil-price sensitivity. The source-data kit preserves CSV/JSON extracts, source URLs and page locations, schemas, retrieval manifests, quality checks and reproduction scripts. The published GIS snapshot was completed October 30, 2026 at 20:19 UTC. It is an attribute inventory; geometry and historical parcel provenance are not reconstructed.

### Source key

[1] [Executed University Lands lease 121606](https://universitylands.utsystem.edu/Document/FileNet/GetFile?id=a0036b0d-d478-c87f-858d-8d37c3400000&leasenumber=121606).

[2] [Texas Constitution, Article VII, especially §§11 and 18](https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/CN/htm/CN.7.htm).

[3] [State ex rel. Moody v. Hatcher, 115 Tex. 332, 281 S.W. 192 (1926)](https://www.neochart.com/catalog/cases/tex/volume_115/0332_01/index.html), primary opinion reproduced from the Caselaw Access Project.

[4] [UT Regents’ Rule 80303, last amended May 8, 2025](https://www.utsystem.edu/board-of-regents/rules/80303-use-of-available-university-fund).

[5] [UT System fiscal 2025 AUF report](https://www.utsystem.edu/sites/default/files/documents/report-state/2025/available-university-fund-report-fy-2025/ut-system-fy-2025-auf-report.pdf), Table 1 and Appendices E–G; printed pages 3, 17–20.

[6] [Texas Tribune/Reveal, August 21, 2017](https://www.texastribune.org/2017/08/21/ut-system-oil-money-gusher-its-administration-and-trickle-students/).

[7] [UT System, 2015 PUF/AUF issue brief](https://www.utsystem.edu/sites/default/files/offices/governmental-relations/The_Permanent_University_Fund_and_Available_University_Fund.pdf), historical policy descriptions dated to the brief.

[8] [Texas State Historical Association, Permanent University Fund](https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/permanent-university-fund), used for history, not its obsolete current-distribution description.

[9] [UT System general PUF explainer](https://www.utsystem.edu/puf), compared with the current governing rule.

[10] [University Lands fiscal 2025 annual report](https://online.flippingbook.com/view/672420561/), especially printed pages 1, 11, 23 and 32. Producer logos and the financial-volume table were visually inspected.

[11] Primary ownership sources, with full qualifiers in `corporate_owner_crosswalk.csv`: [Diamondback investor FAQ](https://diamondbackenergy.gcs-web.com/investors/investor-faqs); [ConocoPhillips stock information](https://www.conocophillips.com/investor-relations/stock-information/); [ExxonMobil July 2026 parent reorganization SEC filing](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2115436/000119312526291990/d71068d8k12b.htm); [Continental March 2026 SEC report](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/732834/000073283426000003/ck0000732834-20260331.htm). Sequitur evidence and unresolved ownership shares are documented separately in the crosswalk.

[12] [University Lands GIS data](https://universitylands.utsystem.edu/Resources/GIS), particularly the [lease attributes](https://services3.arcgis.com/8jYUORGmDUL39WkJ/arcgis/rest/services/OG_Lease/FeatureServer/0) and [well attributes](https://services3.arcgis.com/8jYUORGmDUL39WkJ/arcgis/rest/services/WellSHL/FeatureServer/0). Counts are this investigation’s calculations on the preserved snapshot.

[13] [University Lands lease form 51](https://utlands.utsystem.edu/Posts/Document/lease_form_51).

[14] [George D. Braden et al., The Constitution of the State of Texas: An Annotated and Comparative Analysis, Article VII (1977)](https://www.sll.texas.gov/assets/pdf/braden/28-article-vii.pdf), especially printed pages 540–548. Used as historical scholarship, not current law.

[15] [Texas Attorney General Opinion DM-370 (1995)](https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/opinion-files/opinion/1995/dm0370.pdf), printed page 6, corroborating Hatcher’s treatment of university mineral receipts.

[16] [High Country News, Land-Grab Universities (2020)](https://www.hcn.org/issues/52-4/indigenous-affairs-education-land-grab-universities/).

[17] UTIMCO audited PUF statements for [2015](https://www.utimco.org/media/mmnf3qbr/puf2015auditedfinancials.pdf), [2017](https://www.utimco.org/media/mmmpwudw/puf2017auditedfinancials.pdf), [2019](https://www.utimco.org/media/2x5dsp5c/k-files-reports-annual-2019-financial-statements-final-2019-puf-financial-statements-final.pdf), [2021](https://www.utimco.org/media/0b4hpbli/2021-puf-audited-financial-statements.pdf), [2023](https://www.utimco.org/media/dwkpsi12/2023-puf-audited-financial-statements.pdf) and [2025](https://www.utimco.org/media/3glhzmod/2025-puf-audited-financial-statements.pdf). Every annual source URL and statement page appears in `puf_audited_flows_fy2014_fy2025.csv` and `fund_source_ledger.csv`.

[18] [UTIMCO fiscal 2023 audited PUF statement](https://www.utimco.org/media/dwkpsi12/2023-puf-audited-financial-statements.pdf), comparative fiscal 2022 column, printed page 9.

[19] [UT System PUF bond information](https://www.utbonds.utsystem.edu/permanent-university-fund/about/i613), read with Article VII §18(e)–(g).

[20] [UT Regents’ May 2025 minutes](https://www.utsystem.edu/sites/default/files/offices/board-of-regents/board-meetings/board-minutes/5-2025Meeting1253.pdf), printed pages 12–14 and 110–111.

[21] [UT Regents’ May 2026 minutes](https://www.utsystem.edu/sites/default/files/offices/board-of-regents/board-meetings/board-minutes/5-2026Meeting1264.pdf), printed pages 7–9. The approved action occurred May 21; a later A&M bond document gives a different meeting date.

[22] [UTIMCO preliminary August 2026 performance summary](https://www.utimco.org/media/y3phtktw/202608-monthly-performance-summary-preliminary.pdf). Preliminary asset values are not mixed into the audited twelve-year bridge.

[23] [UT Austin fiscal 2027 approved budget](https://utsystem.edu/sites/default/files/documents/report-state/2026/annual-operating-budget-ut-austin/fy-2027-university-of-texas-at-austin.pdf), B.1 and C.1.

[24] [THECB, Texas Higher Education Enrollments 2025](https://reportcenter.highered.texas.gov/reports/data/texas-higher-education-enrollments-2025/), source cells retained in `beneficiaries_fy2025.json`; eligibility joined to current constitutional and statutory provisions.

[25] [Texas Education Code §80.09](https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/ED/htm/ED.80.htm) and [enacted SFA legislation’s official analysis](https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/analysis/html/SB01055F.htm).

[26] [Texas Education Code §62.021](https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/ED/htm/ED.62.htm).

[27] [A&M System fiscal 2025 Rider 5 AUF report](https://assets.system.tamus.edu/files/budgets-acct/pdf/auf/2025aufreportRider5.pdf), Appendices D and H–J.

[28] [A&M System fiscal 2025 Rider 6 report](https://assets.system.tamus.edu/files/budgets-acct/pdf/auf/2025aufreportRider6.pdf), system services, grants and regional initiatives.

[29] [UT System August 2025 PUF investment summary](https://www.utsystem.edu/sites/default/files/documents/report-state/2025/memorandum-of-understanding-investment-related-transactions-account-fy-2025/202508pufsuminvestments.pdf), including the explicit land-value exclusion footnote; [FY2025 audited PUF statements](https://www.utimco.org/media/3glhzmod/2025-puf-audited-financial-statements.pdf).

[30] [UT System fiscal 2025 consolidated financial report](https://www.utsystem.edu/sites/default/files/documents/report-state/2025/consolidated-annual-financial-report-fy-2025/uts-fy25-and-fy24-audit-reportfinal121125.pdf), land valuation methodology at printed page 49 and fair-value tables at printed pages 50 and 52.