A group of landowners with 20,000 acres in Jefferson County and Harrison County, in eastern Ohio, is nearing a lease deal to allow Marcellus Shale drilling. One of the energy companies in the final bidding is XTO Energy (now a division of Exxon Mobil).
Bethany College, located in Bethany, WV (Brooke County), has just signed a lease agreement with Chesapeake Energy to allow drilling for Marcellus Shale gas on property owned by the college.
Read More “WV College Signs Lease with Chesapeake Energy to Allow Marcellus Shale Drilling”
The Pennsylvania Environmental Council, an anti-drilling organization, has published a Marcellus Shale Lease Guide that identifies potential environmental issues that landowners may want to consider when leasing. Of course, inserting all sorts of restrictions and requirements in a contract may mean the drilling company won’t sign it, so a balance must be achieved. Still, there are some good points in the guide that a landowner can use in discussions with their attorney to ensure the landowner is protected from drilling activities.
Download the Marcellus Shale Lease Guide here:
//www.pagreenlease.org/
UPDATE (6/30/11): A representative from the PEC emailed MDN to state that the organization is “not anti-drilling”. Fair enough. MDN will pass that claim along to readers. However, MDN also points out that the PEC, along with PennFuture and other so-called environmental organizations that loudly proclaim they want responsible drilling seem (to MDN) to be using that language to disguise that they would really rather have no drilling rather than safe drilling. In the meantime, ahead of that end-goal, they push for new laws and regulations that will greatly limit drilling in PA. Are some of their proposals good? You bet. Some are common sense and I would support those proposals. But don’t for a minute think there’s not an ulterior motive behind them—the incremental strategy of “a little more here, a little more there”. And so, I maintain, they are in the anti-drilling camp.
Ohio’s Attorney General, Mike DeWine, offers the following tips for landowners when they are presented with an offer to lease their land for oil and gas drilling. Although Mr. DeWine is addressing Ohioans, these common sense tips apply to anyone in any geography.
Read More “Ohio Attorney General Shares Landowner Tips for Leasing Your Land”
For landowners who are considering leasing their property for gas drilling, or for those who have already leased, you now have an important new resource to research the lease deals others have received: www.MarcellusUSA.com.
The new wealth that leasing and drilling in the Marcellus Shale brings on, can also bring on a new set of challenges for landowners, many of whom are farmers who have struggled to pay the bills for years.
A case in point are the issues faced when there are multiple owners of a family farm, as told by Stuart “Buzz” Hutchison, an estate and trust attorney:
Read More “Money Problems for Landowners with Marcellus Shale Lease & Royalty Payments”
Earlier this year, a group of 40 Town of Windsor (NY) landowners with a cumulative 3,000 acres signed a gas lease agreement with Denver-based Inflection Energy to allow Marcellus Shale drilling when New York’s moratorium is eventually lifted. The landowners expected their signing bonus checks by March 3rd, but that didn’t happen due to delays by the lawyers (see MDN story here). The delays are now over the the Windsor landowners have started receiving their bonus checks totaling $8.25 million.
A Rotary meeting in East Liverpool, Ohio discussed shale gas drilling in Columbiana and Carroll Counties for both the Marcellus and Utica shales. Among the things learned at the meeting:
Read More “Carroll County, OH Landowners Offered $3200 Per Acre for Shale Gas Leases”
United Local Schools in Hanoverton (Columbiana County), Ohio approved a Marcellus Shale gas drilling lease with DPS Penn yesterday:
A number of landowners in New York’s Southern Tier region (Broome and Tioga Counties) signed leases with gas companies in 2000 for peanuts, $3 per acre, long before shale gas drilling was discovered and used. The technologies of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have been around for decades, but it wasn’t until 2006 that the two were combined to tap shale gas.
Read More “NY Landowners Sue Chesapeake & Statoilhydro Over Force Majeure Lease Extension”
The Pennsylvania Game Commission has just leased more land under its control for Marcellus Shale drilling:
The Avonworth Municipal Authority in Allegheny County, PA recently signed a five-year drilling lease for the ACORD Municipal Park property controlled by the Authority (see the MDN story here). However, the deal was contingent on four of the five municipalities that oversee the 119-acre park in Kilbuck and Ohio Townships. Last night Emsworth council was the second municipality to vote against the measure and so the deal will not go forward.
An article on the Forbes website covers a recent energy conference held by Yale alumni. The focus of the article is on how America’s shale gas has turned around chemical companies. But MDN found this interesting paragraph talking about the Utica Shale:
Read More “Chesapeake Energy Paying $2,500 per Acre to Lease Utica Shale”
The Avonworth Municipal Authority in Allegheny County, PA (near Pittsburgh) has just signed a five-year drilling lease for park property controlled by the Authority.
Read More “Municipal Authority in Western PA Signs Drilling Lease for 119 Acre Park”
The decision is in, and Winfield Township (Butler County), PA supervisors have voted to not accept an offer from BLX-Redmill to lease 60 acres of the 69-acre township park located behind the municipal building.
Read More “Winfield Township, PA Turns Down Lease Offer from BLX-Redmill; Lessons for Landowners”
Last year some 40 landowners separated from the Windsor & Colesville Oil and Gas Lease Coalition to sign a deal to lease their land to Inflection Energy. Collectively the breakaway group holds about 3,000 acres. The rest of the coalition decided against signing in hopes of a better deal once drilling is allowed to begin in New York. The deal signed with Inflection was supposed to yield a signing bonus of $2,750 per acre, due to landowners by March 3rd. But that payment did not happen.
Read More “Infection Energy Delays Signing Bonus Payments for Landowners in Windsor, NY Area”