NWPOA to sign gas lease

80,000 acres and 1,000 landowners

By SANDY LONG

WAYNE COUNTY, PA — The moment that 1,000 Wayne County property owners have been waiting for appears to have arrived. According to its website, the Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance (NWPOA) has navigated a lengthy negotiation process with various natural gas extraction companies and is now focused on finalizing an offer from Hess Corporation.

At a July 1 meeting of the NWPOA steering committee, “a comparison of the offers” for NWPOA’s consideration was discussed at length. “The leases were compared section by section and item by item. Terms (bonus money and royalty) were compared carefully. In the end, it came down to the value of the entire package,” notes a post on the site.

A role call vote indicated an “overwhelming majority” to recommend the Hess lease and financial offer to the NWPOA membership.

The post continues, “Later in the meeting, your Steering Committee entered into a Letter of Intent with Hess. We, the Steering Committee, are extremely pleased to pass this information on to you, and we believe that you will be as pleased as we are with the outcome of Wednesday’s meeting.”

To move the process forward as quickly as possible, NWPOA members are being asked to review copies of the Hess lease and attend a series of meetings conducted by Hess representatives. “The Hess representatives want to meet the property owners and explain the lease, the logistics of signing the lease, and the future plans of Hess in our area,” notes the website.

The meetings are expected to occur at several locations, possibly during the July 10 weekend, and are open to NWPOA members only. According to its executive director, Marion Schweighofer, the 1,000 NWPOA members in Wayne and Susquehanna counties hold approximately 80,000 acres of land.

Both NWPOA and Hess anticipate that the process will be completed within the next several weeks. “We are getting her done!” the post concludes. “The next few days will be filled with important information, so don’t change that dial.”

NWPOA spokesperson Mike Uretsky said that specific terms of the lease are still under discussion. “NWPOA represents a large number of landowners who are balancing economic development with needs of both the community and environment. It has done considerable research in this area and is comfortable that, in collaboration with others, it is moving forward with sensitivity to all of these factors,” he added. For more information visit www.nwpoa.info/index.html or contact Schweighofer at marian@nwpoa.info.