Gas wells make some landowners happy

Regular checks make up for disruption

By TOM KANE

WASHINGTON COUNTY, PA - Not everyone around the village of Hickory, PA is unhappy with the gas drilling that’s going on there. Quite a few landowners say good things about Range Resources, the local gas company from Texas.

“It’s very much of a mixed bag,” said Mount Pleasant Township zoning officer Larry Chome. “At first, when the drilling got started in earnest, we heard a lot of complaints at township meetings. But as time went on, the problems got more or less solved. You have to put up with a lot of disruption like noise and bad roads and things like that initially.”

It’s exceptionally noisy, with drilling going on 24 hours a day until the well is dug, he said. And there have been a few mishaps. One well caught fire and it sounded like a jet engine. “The flames shot up about 30 feet and you could see it from three miles away, but it was eventually capped and silenced,” Chome said. Some people had to be set up in a hotel while the drilling was going on. The quality of life is disrupted for a while, but it’s relatively temporary, he said. Many of the well sites are on large farms hidden from view.

While some individual landowners are not doing well, and are dealing with a lot of environmental problems on their properties that don’t seem to get better, “others are doing real well and they’re receiving some hefty checks now,” Chome said. He said people were tight-lipped about how much money they were receiving.

One farmer, Robert Deiseroth, 89, who has a 120-acre farm and has been retired for years, is very happy with his situation.

“My experience has only been good,” he said. “No matter what, when there was some damage, they came back and fixed it better than it was. The money is great. It’s the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

Deiseroth would not say how much money he was getting, like so many other landowners who were interviewed. “Let’s say that I’m doing real good,” he said.

Deiseroth’s son, Robert Jr., has a 115-acre farm and wasn’t very happy at first when the company came in five years ago. “My well is only vertical and not horizontal, so I’m not getting that much,” he said.

Horizontal drilling, a new technology that appeared two years ago, gives a greater yield in most successful wells, he said.

Dieseroth Jr. also would not say how much he was getting. “I told a reporter from Pittsburgh a few months ago and my neighbors jumped all over me,” he said. He admitted, however, that some people who have horizontal wells, are getting as much as $25,000 and $30,000 a month.

There is not a lot of permanent damage to the environment so far, he said. “At first, they hauled in millions of gallons of water to drill a well,” he said. “There were as many as 50 large tankers sitting on my property, but that doesn’t happen anymore because they run aluminum pipes down to nearby lakes and streams for the water. So, there are fewer heavy trucks on the roads and far less damage than happened at first.”

Dan Renz, a heating and air conditioning service worker who lives in Hickory, wasn’t entirely happy with Range Resources. “I’m doing okay, but I wish the company were more aware of what people value,” he said. “The company just cut down my woods when I think they could have drilled in the open field,” he said. Also, they put in a second well without his approval.

“I’m doing all right financially and it’s nice to get the checks every month,” he said.

“They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I guess that saying applies here,” Chome said. “Some people like what’s going on and others don’t.”

PA to lease 75k forest acres to gas drilling

HARRISBURG, PA - The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) announced that it will accept competitive bids from gas drilling companies to drill in 75,000 acres of state forestlands. The measure is in response to the increased interest in the Marcellus Shale formation that many believe is beneath large parts of the state.

“This approach on shallow gas drilling is a way for the DCNR to cautiously and responsibly balance its legislative requirement to provide for the economic use of mineral resources while sustaining those forests and their ecological, recreational and cultural benefits for present and future Pennsylvanians,” said DCNR Secretary Michael DiBerardinis.

Oil and gas extraction has been part of the state forest plan for more than six decades and it will continue to help provide clean energy and economic returns that we will invest in conservation initiatives, he said.

Facts about gas drilling

• Marcellus Shale is a geological layer of gas more than 50 feet thick at a depth of between 6,000 and 10,000 feet under more than 34 million acres that stretch through the Appalachian Plateau of Pennsylvania into New York, Ohio and West Virginia.

• Marcellus Shale could contain up to 516 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

• Ten percent of such deposits are recovered on average thorough drilling, which would value the deposit up to $1 trillion.

• The Marcellus deposit is continuous and located near markets in the Eastern U.S., which increases its value.

• Twenty oil and gas companies will invest $700 million this year in Pennsylvania in exploiting the Marcellus Shale deposit

• The cost to companies for leasing mineral rights jumped from $300 an acre in mid-February to $2,000 an acre in mid-April.

SOURCE: Terry Engelder, professor of geo-science at the University Park campus of Penn State University, and Thomas B. Murphy of Penn State University.

Proactive property protection

Town of Delaware looks to safeguard roads from gas drilling rigs

By TOM KANE

tkane@riverreporter.com

HORTONVILLE, NY - The Town of Delaware wants to be proactive. They also want to protect their roads.

After a lengthy discussion at the Town of Delaware Town Board meeting on April 16, supervisor Jim Scheutzow suggested that the board ask the town attorney Kenneth Klein and the town’s consultant engineer Terry Kelly to investigate measures to shield the town from incurring the costs of possible road deterioration.

The board unanimously agreed.

“We can’t zone out these companies but we can protect our roads,” said Gerry Euker, a member of the town’s planning board.

There are laws that allow a town to demand a bond from the companies in case of serious deterioration,” he said. “I’m surprised that the town doesn’t have laws like that.”

Highway superintendent Bill Eschenberg said that the town can legitimately set weight limits on roads. “But you can’t stop some trucks and allow others to use our roads. The law has to apply to everyone,” he said.

“We need Ken Klein and Terry Kelly to see what the story is about setting weight limits and asking for a bond,” Scheutzow said.