Feds Deny Private Landowers the Right to Drill in PA
Kangaroo News Service (Nov 2):
Local Citizens, Civic and Business Leaders Launch Petition to Resume Oil and Gas Development in the Allegheny National Forest
This one should make every landowner shudder–with anger and fear. The Obama Administration has illegally shut down drilling on private land in Pennsylvania. Landowners who own land in the Allegheny National Forest are now denied access to drill and sell the natural gas under their own land by fiat from the U.S. Forest Service, part of the executive branch of the federal government (i.e., Obama). This naked and forceful grab of individuals’ rights by the federal government cannot go unanswered. Make your voices heard!!
We have to go all the way to an Australian news service for this one folks:
In a petition distributed by the Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Association (POGAM) and Allegheny Forest Alliance (AFA), nearly 2,000 citizens, and civic and business leaders from Elk, Forest, Warren and McKean counties have called for President Obama and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to lift a ban on oil and gas development by the U.S. Forest Service, which effectively has halted drilling on privately owned mineral lands underlying the Allegheny National Forest. The petition was also mailed to Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell to encourage a greater effort by the Commonwealth to support a critical element of northwestern Pennsylvania’s economy.
In a historically unprecedented action, local and regional managers of the Allegheny National Forest have banned oil and natural gas exploration and barred mineral owners from accessing their property throughout the forest, effectively seizing the development rights to privately owned oil, gas and mineral resources. The ban has shut down oil and natural gas exploration and stymied production in the forest, where the industry has operated for decades in cooperation with the U.S. government. The petition maintains that the ban illegally violates Pennsylvania’s grant of consent to the United States in 1921 to acquire the forest and also violates the protection of private property rights in the federal law, the Weeks Act of 1911, under which it was acquired.
“The behavior by the Forest Service is most irresponsible, and it amounts to the unlawful taking of private property,” said Stephen W. Rhoads, POGAM president. “State records show that fewer than 50 wells, all of them permitted prior to the drilling ban imposed on January 1, have been drilled in the Allegheny National Forest during 2009. The Forest Service has prevented the drilling of between 200-300 wells that would have otherwise occurred. These undrilled wells translate into private investment of nearly $100 million and jeopardize hundreds of good-paying jobs in the region. The action of the Forest Service amounts to a full-scale assault on the economic health of the families and communities living in and around the Allegheny National Forest.”
Private oil and gas development within the Allegheny National Forest accounts for at least 20 percent of Pennsylvania’s oil production and as much as 10 percent of Pennsylvania’s natural gas production. It contributes tens of millions of dollars annually into the regional economy of northwest Pennsylvania and western New York.
For decades, the U.S. Forest Service and the oil and natural gas industry have worked cooperatively to manage oil and gas development. The petition represents a strong consensus among citizens and local community leaders about the importance of this industry and the condemnation of the Forest Services’ current management practices to immobilize the region’s economic recovery and progress.
Citizens should have been shuddering long before now when the industry destroyed the public surface land of the ANF and the USFS allowed them in violation of Federal Law. The Federal Law, which is now being applied, involves an environmental assessment to lessen the impacts of this destructive industry (suggesting that a well should be moved away from a sensitive wetland, or a tank battery should be moved further from a high quality stream, or that a road layout should be arranged so that it can’t be seen from a scenic byway). You should also get your facts straight. Oil and Gas development is NOT shut down on the forest. More OGD roads are going in adding to the thousands already bulldozed through forest habitat, streams, and springs; more wells are being drilled adding to the 15,000 active wells already on the forest; more tank batteries are being installed; spills are continuing to occur destroying the high quality fishing streams of the area. Almost 600 wells were permitted in the past year. This number of wells is about 2 ½ times higher than an average year (as identified by the USFS and the industry in federal court recently). Recently oil and gas development has exploded on the forest with no environmental assessment and essentially no monitoring. The industry has refused to acknowledge that the USFS has any right to protect the surface lands for the communities that live in them, for the public that visits them to hunt, fish, camp, and hike; and for the downstream communities that use the Allegheny River as a drinking water source.
Who writes this junk? No fact checking?
I never seen Obama on the ANF is he a member of the Allegheny Defense Project now?
WE, the people are the “land owners” in the ANF!
The shills for the oil companies just bought the mineral rights, in most cases for just pennies per acre. Should we let them ruin our surface for their “investment” of just pennies per acre? WE paid a lot more for the surface rights than they ever paid for the subsurface. AND they don’t pay tax on their “private property” thanks to POGAM! Another “fact” they would rather you don’t learn about!
Check out the ADP website if you want to see what is really going on on OUR land!
Get your facts straight! It’s all about a few greedy mineral extractors raping our lands for selfish profits! And leaving destruction behind for future generations to suffer with.