The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

Local News

March 1, 2010

Controversial drilling issue up for Senate vote

By Mannix Porterfield Register-Herald Reporter

CHARLESTON — A vote is set today in the Senate that opens the door for Marcellus Shale gas drillers to tap into private property from the edge of the owner’s land.

The measure has come under intense fire by the West Virginia Surface Owners’ Rights Organization, which considers it nothing short of “legalized stealing.”

Under the proposal, the wells to be dug will be deemed “shallow,” meaning the drillers can set up shop along the edge of mineral boundaries and drain gas from adjoining mineral tracks.

Without any amendments offered, the bill was moved to third reading for a vote today.

“One Marcellus Shale well could take more than $1,000 in royalties from a neighboring mineral owner, and that is only one the first day of production,” said Charleston attorney David McMahon, who heads the organization.

Marcellus Shale is a unit of marine sedimentary rock prominent in the eastern part of the country, fingering all the way down into the Appalachian Basin.

Filled with untapped reserves, the shale is within easy marketing distance of users along the Eastern Seaboard, explaining why developers are moving to tap into it.

Most of West Virginia extending into the western portion of Virginia contains the shale.

McMahon, whose group lost an earlier battle with the Senate Energy, Industry and Mining Committee in getting reforms in surface owner rights, said SB369 provides no legal limit on the proximity of drilling the so-called shallow wells.

That leads potentially to less production, McMahon said.

“Statutory ‘deep’ wells can be made subject to well spacing and royalty sharing,” the attorney said.

“Shallow wells cannot, unless only a registered coal owner objects.”

McMahon’s group issued a drawing depicting a traditional “shallow” well, showing half a dozen wells drilled right across a landowner’s property, drawing off the gas with no obligation to pay a royalty.

If SB369 is enacted, McMahon warned, this will be the result once vertical Marcellus Shale wells are operated with modern techniques and tools.

“The wells will be drilled using the common law ‘rule of capture’ that arose in medieval England, regarding ownership of foxes, which was adopted by courts here when the first oil wells were drilled more than 100 years ago, when we thought oil ran underground in rivers,” McMahon added.

McMahon criticized the EIM’s handling of the bill, approving it in the rear of the Senate after a floor session “in a hastily called meeting.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com

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