WV HB2688 Forced Pooling Bill Continues March Toward Passage
Last week MDN gave you a heads-up that a new forced pooling bill has picked up steam and is moving through the process in the West Virginia legislature (see WV Forced Pooling Bill HB2688 – Good or Bad for Landowners?). The 60-day legislative session in WV is now just past the halfway mark and HB2688 continues to move. It passed the House Energy Committee and is now before the House Judiciary Committee. The bill is polarizing. It seems, at least at a distance, that Republicans (who control both the House and Senate in WV) are lining up to support the bill, and Democrats are lining up to oppose it. Which puts us in the strange circumstance of tilting to the Dem side on this issue. Below we’ve located a good rundown of the main provisions in the bill, along with an editorial written by a House Democrat who opposes the bill–listing his reasons…
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Like a bad penny that keeps turning up, a forced pooling law in West Virginia keeps returning. Every year from 2009-2014 forced pooling legislation has been introduced, and ultimately defeated, in the WV legislature. We’ve covered the issue for years. Once again a new bill has popped up. House Bill (HB) 2688 was introduced by Delegate Lynwood Ireland (Chairman of the House Energy Committee) and co-sponsored by Delegates William Anderson (Speaker Pro-Tempore) and George Ambler. All three are Republicans. The bill has already passed the House Energy Committee and currently sits with the House Judiciary Committee for review. It may move fast or it may move slowly. Proponents of the bill say, in essence, this time the bill is different. There are compromises and provisions to protect both surface and sub-surface landowners. The interesting thing to MDN is that the West Virginia Royalty Owners Association is now on board and supporting the bill. Below we tackle this thorny issue once again. We have the full text of the bill as proposed, along with reaction to it, and our own thoughts…
Yesterday MDN wrote a summary and interpretation of an article appearing in the Harrisburg Patriot-News about the recent court decision known as EQT Production v. Opatkiewicz, et al (see 
MDN previously told you about Hilcorp’s lawsuit to force some hold-out landowners in Lawrence County, PA to allow drilling under their land–a concept called forced pooling. The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the PA courts treated it like a hot potato. The courts finally told the DEP that they (the DEP) would need to decide the matter. So the DEP had set aside two days this week to conduct public hearings in New Castle (see