Experts Brief Property Owners on Marcellus Shale Land Use

Marian Schweighofer said that it started for her on an evening four years ago, when a group of her fellow farmers in Wayne County, PA, gathered around a kitchen table.

The group met to discuss the increasing number of offers that each of them was fielding from natural gas drilling companies seeking to lease large tracts of Eastern Pennsylvania farmland to drill for Marcellus Shale gas.

The neighbors collectively owned 10,000 acres of land.

“We needed to find a way to pull our community together,” Schweighofer told a small audience of property owners on Saturday at  in . “We needed to be proactive now rather than reactive later.

“Please realize that every part of the lease is negotiable.”

Schweighofer and a group of industry experts talked to Pittsburgh-area property owners about air and water quality; hydrofracturing, or “fracking,” practices; and drawing up leases with drilling companies.

The event, sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Greater Pittsburgh, briefed property owners on what they might expect should a drilling company request to use their land.

Schweighofer’s neighborhood group eventually grew to include more than 1,800 property owners who call themselves the Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance. The group, which controls more than 100,000 acres of land in Susquehanna County, PA, and northern Wayne County, banded together to negotiate leasing and water quality-control terms for drilling companies and subcontractors.

Davitt Woodwell, executive vice president of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, said that Schweighofer’s coalition is one that others in Pennsylvania should emulate.

“The industry is very different than it was three years ago,” Woodwell said. “Get an attorney who has experience doing these leases. Don’t do it yourself.”

Moon Township officials are in the process of adding Marcellus Shale drilling regulations into the township’s oil- and gas-drilling ordinance.

No one has applied for a permit to drill for Marcellus Shale gas in the township yet, Moon Manager Jeanne Creese said; although, township officials believe that drilling companies have leased at least three tracts of land in Moon.

“There is some inevitability to this process,” said panelist William Danchuk, a land use attorney, “but we can make changes to our lives and behavior to make it work.”

Get an Attorney

Danchuk said that any property owner considering leasing land to a drilling company should first consult an attorney with expertise in land use.

“Everyone who I know who has signer’s regret did not get an attorney,” Danchuk said. “Every day, there is another change. Every day, there is another nuance in the industry.”

Danchuck said that leasing specifications may include provisions covering wildlife protection, noise control or a ban on surface-drilling activity. 

Property owners also should be more mindful of collecting royalties over the course of the land use rather than money earned upfront from the lease, he said.

“A lot of property owners are looking for front-end money,” he said. “Negate the front-end money. It’s a wash.”

Insist on Testing Water

Woodwell said that property owners should request that companies test groundwater near the drilling area over the course of the lease.

He also said that property owners should include a clause in their leases that pertains to recreational use. Owners should make sure to prohibit drilling company personnel and contractors from hunting, fishing, swimming and camping on their property, he said.

They should also negotiate what infrastructure will be placed on their land, including storage facilities, surface roads and pipelines.

Work Alongside Neighbors

Panelists said that property owners who own sprawling tracts of land will have the most control in the negotiating process.

Officials in Moon have said that the township’s level of development and population density mean that drilling companies may not aggressively target that area at all.

“We thought, if we could hold the properties together, we would be in a better place to negotiate,” Schweighofer said.

Schweighofer owns more than 700 acres of farmland, but she said that suburban neighbors with smaller land plots can work alongside one another in the leasing process.

“[Companies will] come in and say, ‘All your neighbors are doing this,’” Woodwell said. “‘This is what they’ve all signed, so you need to do this.’ That’s not always the case.

“People getting together have leverage. If you go in as a group, you’ve got a much better opportunity to get the best terms in your lease going forward.”

This article originally appeared on the .

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