CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Should forcing property owners to give up their mineral rights for horizontal natural gas drilling developments be allowed in West Virginia?
It’s a question state lawmakers are expected to take up again in the form of legislation dealing with forced pooling or lease integration once the 2016 Regular Legislative Session begins on Jan. 13 at the State Capitol.
Opponents of the proposal are already organizing.
“Just as a citizen of the United States of America, I take offense to the word ‘forced’ on just about anything,” said Basil Keaton, a mineral owner from Raleigh County and a member of the newly formed Southern West Virginia Mineral Owners Coalition.
Small tract private landowners in Monroe, Summers, Greenbrier and Raleigh counties, those who largely own up to 200 acres, make up the organization that held its first meeting, earlier this month, to begin planning their efforts to lobby against the proposal.
“The property owners pay the taxes. The corporations want to come in and have the state legislate legal robbery of their property through forced pooling law even though they’re paying taxes,” argued Keaton.
Supporters, though, have said the legislation, if approved, would allow mineral rights owners who want to sell their gas to exercise their options even if their neighbors are reluctant to do so.
Any property owners forced into the sale of mineral rights, proponents have said, would be adequately compensated with the proposal.
A similar forced pooling bill came within one vote of passage during the 2015 Regular Legislative Session. It died with a 49-49 tie vote in the state House of Delegates on the final night in March.
Lawmakers have since been studying the issue.
In November, an interim legislative committee looked at a proposal to recreate the West Virginia Oil and Gas Conservation Commission as a body charged with approving shallow and deep well horizontal gas drilling on large tracts of land when mineral rights owners do not voluntarily give up their rights, as long as permissions from 80 percent are obtained.
As envisioned, the secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection, another DEP official and four appointees would make up that group.
With that proposal, applicants for the forced pooling option must first meet a requirement that “good faith negotiations” have taken place with property owners.
“We can do nothing, do something and we all may not agree on the actual details of that, but you’re going to have to come to some agreement sometime,” Del. Woody Ireland (R-Pleasants, 07) said at that time. He opposes forced pooling, but backs legislative action on the issue.
Gas industry officials have called forced pooling the “missing link” in allowing West Virginia to maximize the state’s Marcellus and Utica shale gas deposits.
Forced pooling or lease integration is already an option for vertical drilling in West Virginia.