This story is startling in its duplicity ... some people get the all the perks, and some people just get all the pain ...
Opinion today: Citizens misled by hydrofracking leases
by The Post-Standard, Syracuse.com -- February 09, 2012
[...]
In 2006, the huge oil and gas companies started sending land men into the Southern Tier and the Finger Lakes to entice the current natives {residents} to sign drilling leases. They had only good things to say. They would give you a price per acre and a percentage of the profits. They did not mention that the wells would be drilled by a procedure called hydrofracking, with possible contamination of our water and a complete disruption to our countryside with truck traffic, drilling rigs, compressor stations, wastewater pits, etc.
They leased the land for as little as $5 per acre, and sold the leases as five-year leases. Chesapeake Energy Corp. described its aggressive lease acquisition program as the “gas shale land grab of 2006-2008.”
Meanwhile, the gas companies had to disclose to their shareholders the operating risks of hydrofracking. One company’s disclosure included:
- Well site blowouts, cratering and explosions.
- Equipment failures.
- Uncontrolled flow of natural gas, oil or well fluids.
- Fires.
- Formations with abnormal pressures.
- Pollution and other environmental risks and natural disasters.
[...]
One audience gets the tall tale. The other audience gets the short list of economic risks they're taking ... can you tell which is which?
Why is it investor interests, always trump individual interests?
Chalk it up to the unregulated Free-Markets, I guess.
What exactly is in the "bill of goods" that gets sold to land owners, who blithely lease away their land rights to the Natural Gas extractors anyway?
Is it really a case of "found windfall money" ... or is it more like a case of "buyer beware"?
Learning Too Late of the Perils in Gas Well Leases
by Ian Urbina and Jo Craven McGinty NYTimes -- Dec 1, 2011
[...]
Energy company officials say that standard leases include language that protects landowners. But a review of more than 111,000 leases, addenda and related documents by The New York Times suggests otherwise:
[...]
-- Fewer than half the leases require companies to compensate landowners for water contamination after drilling begins. And only about half the documents have language that lawyers suggest should be included to require payment for damages to livestock or crops.
[...]
-- In the leases, drilling companies rarely describe to landowners the potential environmental and other risks that federal laws require them to disclose in filings to investors.
[...]
-- Most leases are for three or five years, but at least two-thirds of those reviewed by The Times allow extensions without additional approval from landowners.
[... even more common lease "exemptions" ]
If it's a lease with a "corporate person" -- be very careful about what you are signing away. Because what they don't say,
can hurt you.
However all that "creative legalese" can cut both ways -- especially if you have reps on the local city council who decide to protect the interests of the locals, over the interest of the "far removed."
The locals in this small town in New York, decided enough was enough. They used their own Zoning Laws to prevent the Corporate Frackers from tapping their area's mineral rights, through some creative "legal restrictions" of their own:
New York Town Gets Court OK to Ban Hydraulic Fracturing
community.nasdaq.com
posted by Pierre Bertrand from International Business Times -- 2/22/2012
[...]
A New York State court has turned back a natural gas company's bid to stop towns from banning horizontal hydraulic fracturing, potentially boosting local opposition to the controversial gas drilling procedure.
In a case that began in August 2011, the supervisor of the Town of Dryden, in upstate Tompkins County, N.Y., attempted to use the local zoning law to prohibit oil and natural gas companies from drilling within the town. Dryden has drawn interest from companies that do hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
[...]
"What this says is the Oil Gas and Solution Mining Law does not trump zoning laws," said the town's attorney, Mahlon Perkins.
[...]
"By upholding Dryden's fracking ban, Judge [Phillip] Rumsey has brought a renewed sense of hope to the many cities and towns concerned with fracking," Katherine Nadeau, Water and Natural Resources program director for the Environmental Advocates of New York, said in a statement.
[...]
Chalk one up for the little guys. For the good guys. For the human-people, fighting back against the corporate behemoths,
who promise the world, only to take the money and run.
I hope this is a sign of a brand new trend: a people-powered trend. That of towns standing up and saying Hell No were not gonna to take it anymore. Enough of the Corporate land-grabs -- they need to get the Hell out of OUR Aquifers! We have "a rule" for that.
Before they -- the locals -- find out the "hard way" -- what was NOT said in those NG Leases -- are precisely the undisclosed risks that they alone are taking on ... by signing on that corporate dotted-line.