What’s this? The Pennsylvania State Senate, which is controlled by the Republican Party, has added insult to injury. We’ve already told you about Republican traitors in the Senate who sold out their House counterparts by voting for a disastrous severance tax to raise money to give away to teachers’ unions (see Traitorous PA Senate Republicans Pass Severance Tax Bill). Little did we know they also sneaked in, in the dead of night, a provision in the budget bill that will make it harder for PA landowners with old oil and gas leases to renegotiate those leases. Sometimes landowners have old oil and gas wells on their property, drilled decades ago before horizontal drilling and fracking were combined. And those leases were signed for pennies on the dollar. These days when shale drillers come calling, landowners can often command thousands of dollars per acre in signing bonuses. But a provision in the fiscal code, passed as part of the budget the traitorous Senate passed, would limit the ability of landowners to renegotiate those old leases, allowing drillers to revive expired leases and not pay new lease bonuses…
