Marcellus Shale Gas (Elmira, Catskill, Greene: leasing, insurance, how much)
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Apparently gas company reps. are knocking on doors in my neck of Delaware Co. trying to get residents to sign on the dotted line for a quick few bucks in trade for mining rights. Anyone have any stories or experience with this?
...We had a gas lease on our property...which expired. With the BIG interest in the gas deposits over a 5 county area, the gas exploration outfits are back in a big way. Yes, they're offering more $$ this time around, but there can be many pitfalls for the landowner. We've been approached by 2 companies. As a matter of fact, we're going to Elmira tonight for an informational meeting put on by the NY farm bureau about dealing w/these companies. Too bad you don't live close...I'd reccommend you attend.
...but there can be many pitfalls for the landowner.
Yes, I've heard some horror stories of landowners seeing their property ruined by the drilling operations, having signed leases without adequate legal advice. My inclination is to simply say "thanks, but no thanks," but they haven't knocked on my door yet anyway. They must be in the neighborhood, as it was a neighbor who did knock on the door asking if we'd been approached. A man of few words, he didn't reveal his position on it other than to say, "get a good lawyer before you sign anything."
Location: North of the Cow Pasture and South of the Wind Turbines
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I started reading this guys blog GAS RUSH « The Catskill Commentator a while back when first learning of the gas rush going on up here. He hasn't updated in a while but he seems to keep his finger on the pulse of goings on here.
I had a farmer down the road tell me he was approached. First they said they needed an acre and minimal road clearing - then it was 5 acres and a full blown road. He laughed them off his property - same as he did a wind salesman...
Well, the Catskill's Commentator certainly is up-front about his political leanings! I don't think he really goes all that far in 'debunking the green-weenies' concerns about drilling. Sure, you can establish a road, rip up a pasture, put in a well then rake and reseed the whole site and in four or five years it will appear more or less as it did before the construction of the well (except for the acre well-head and a bit of infrastructure, pipeline, etc.). More or less the same sort of thing happens when one builds a house, be it a particleboard McMansion or an uber-green passive solar zero energy techno-palace. Eventually the surface recovers. The problem with 'fracting,' this horizontal drilling process, is in the huge amount of water used and the chemical cocktail added to that water. And this chemical cocktail is a secret, proprietary, Haliburton developed formula- so nobody is allowed to know what is in it. Sure, I want plentiful and cheap energy, and right now I would love a nice fat royalty from a well on my land- but water is far, far more important to my health, future generation's health, and ultimately a sustainable economy for upstate NY than a couple years of big money that leave a poisoned water supply. If the chemicals used in the water for the extraction process are harmless, why not say what they are? And recently I've been hearing people say things along the lines of, "Why not just sign up and take all the money and move somewhere else?" I think that sort of I'll-get-mine-and-leave-the-mess-for-the-next-guy attitude is at the root of so many problems now coming home to roost. And besides, I'm not putting my blood, sweat and tears into a home, garden, farm and community just to move along at the chance of a few dollars. Family, health, community and the land that sustains it all is priceless. I say drill, drill, drill- but only if you can guarantee it will not poison my water and the mechanisms are in place to enforce that guarantee.
Hi honeychrome, yes it's unfortunate that an "I've got mine" mentality sometimes prevails. However, I caution those with that train of thought that selling and getting out might not be as easy as they think. I reference the CAFO situation here because it is similar in that water quality is also an issue. There have been instances where landowners' wells have been badly contaminated by run-off/seepage, and the home's occupants have become ill. When they tried to sell their home they couldn't, because by that time everyone around knew the circumstances. These people just had to abandon their home. That's what they don't understand - by making choices to allow these sorts of industrial-style practices, with many of the attendant problems, they might devalue the land/home worth significantly. Are people going to be making enough profit from the leases to just walk away from their homes? And if so, is this another blight upstate NY and elsewhere will then have to deal with - abandoned, toxic properties?
Stop by the WV forum, you can read to your hearts content on what these operations can/will do to your property. As a guy who grew up in Delaware and Otsego county, I would hate to see that mess brought to NY. I just bought a farm in southern WV, and this is a big concern there.
Ugh, if you've got gas drilling to contend with on top of coal mining in WV I feel for you. I've read the horror stories about mountain-top removal and the fights against it in WV and how difficult it has been for land-owners and residents to mount a battle against well-funded big-coal. WV is easily on par with upstate NY for beauty, maybe even wins out (shhh, I didn't say that....). We actually considered looking for land there before we decided to stay in NY for financial and insurance reasons. Good luck.
I was just reading the comments on the "I have full-blown -miss-WNY-panic now!" thread. That thread is just one small bit of evidence that there are a lot of people who love upstate NY and really appreciate the beauty of this place. Just about any time anyone from another area has visited us here, they have been really impressed with how beautiful and relatively unspoiled the land in this area is. Several times I've heard outsiders say that living here must be like "living in a park." My husband and I are deeply concerned that Marcellus gas development may change all that forever.
I agree that water contamination is probably the most serious problem related to the drilling, not just because of the chemicals that will be used but also because naturally occurring radioactive rock will be brought to the surface at the drilling sites. But there are many other problems as well: increased traffic, pipelines and access roads, air pollution--not just from drilling and greatly increased truck traffic, but from compressors which must run constantly to keep gas flowing in the system of pipelines that will be required to transport it to market, light pollution from bright lights at drilling sites, and noise pollution from trucks, drilling operations, and compressors. There is also the fact that a lot of land that currently is either forest or farmland will end up crisscrossed with access roads and pipelines and dotted with well pads. If only a small number of wells were contemplated, maybe it wouldn't be so bad, but if this area is drilled at the same density as other shale gas areas, there will be thousands and thousands of wells.
My husband attended the meeting in Greene over the summer where concerns about the drilling were discussed by the DEC. During the question period, my husband said that he is terribly worried that the drilling will destroy the peaceful, rural character present in much of upstate NY. He asked the DEC officials if they thought he was overreacting: he asked, "Am I crazy to worry about this?" The answer he got was that it was not crazy--that that was a real possibility and a reasonable concern.
I have heard some people say that they have visited the handful of Marcellus wells that have been drilled so far down in PA and that it didn't look too bad to them. What I think a lot of people are missing is that the scale of the drilling may be huge--a few wells in any particular area might not be so bad, but hundreds of wells in the same area would be a different story. In Pa's Susquehanna County, a *single* company, Cabot Oil & Gas, plans to drill 110 wells and to lay over 60 miles of pipeline in a 120,000-acre area. Some of these wells will be vertical wells, but some will be horizontal. The horizontal wells require a well pad that is 3-5 acres in size. Right now, only a few wells have been drilled by Cabot in Susquehanna County, and about 10 miles of pipeline have been installed. When there are 10 times as many wells and 6 times as much pipeline, those who now say things "aren't too bad" may change their minds. By then, of course, it will be too late. As it is, according to a recent PSB story, there is at least one family who signed a lease with Cabot and already regrets it, because they hadn't realized how much destruction there would be.
While I, like everyone else, would like to see increased prosperity in our area, I think we have to be very careful not to sacrifice the many wonderful and important resources we have right now in return for a gas boom which most likely will last only a couple of decades at most and which will ruin a lot of land as it unfolds. After the gas is gone, the money and the gas companies will be gone, and we will be left to pick up the pieces.
For most people who live here, their home is their major investment, and since they do not own many acres of land they will see little or nothing in the way of royalties if a well is drilled near them. If there is increased noise, pollution, etc. they will likely see the value of their homes go down. Granted, there is likely to be a ripple effect, in which drilling money will generate other sorts of business. But again, for the average person, this ripple affect is unlikely to result in more than a small gain in income, and once the boom is over, even that small gain will be gone, but the long-term pollution problems and landscape degradation will still be around.
As far as I'm concerned, for the average resident, the drilling probably doesn't even make good economic sense, let alone good environmental sense. The gas companies are trying to rush us into this before we can stop to consider exactly what will be involved. I am very glad that NY suspended Marcellus drilling until the current NY state environmental review of the drilling has been completed (probably some time next spring). The DEC is currently accepting public comments on the environmental review. The deadline for the comments is December 15. To read more about the review, go to:
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"It's a gas"
