Thirteen days after Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett signed a controversial drilling bill into law, the debate over how it will affect Marcellus Shale development has taken a new turn after EQT Corp. filed a lawsuit against 69 landowners and a golf course in Allegheny County, PA.

A spokeswoman for the Pittsburgh-based company EQT’s complaint is actually a counter lawsuit filed after several years of “good faith” efforts to renegotiate old oil and gas leases had failed. EQT wants to drill for gas under the Bunola Storage Field, which a subsidiary uses to store gas underground in Allegheny County.

According to court records, EQT filed a complaint on July 22 alleging the defendants, some of whom formed an entity called Monongahela Group, “has improperly refused to allow EQT to enter upon their respective surface estates to conduct operations…including but not limited to conducting reasonable and customary seismic testing, unless EQT agrees to renegotiate all of the oil and gas leases.”

EQT spokeswoman Linda Robertson told NGI that the lawsuit wasn’t prompted by SB 259’s enactment (see NGI, July 15). “We have been in discussions with these landowners for quite some time, and to date have been unable to resolve several critical issues. The landowner group actually filed a class action lawsuit against EQT a few weeks ago. In response, it was determined that putting the issues before a court would be the most expeditious way to reach resolution.”

Robertson added that the leaseholders, 69 landowners and Riverview Golf Course Inc., “had already negotiated terms of their leases when they were originally signed. But we’ve made, and we continue to make, several good faith efforts to negotiate modifications and to date all of those offers have been refused.”

Robert Burnett — an attorney with the Pittsburgh-based firm Houston Harbaugh PC, and a member of the National Association of Royalty Owners — told NGI that Section 2.1, which addresses apportionment, shouldn’t have been added to SB 259, a royalty statement disclosure bill.

“They inserted it at the eleventh hour,” Burnett said. “It is not just a tool, but it’s now a weapon that gas drillers will use to beat down landowners who simply want to negotiate terms. I’m hopeful that gas drillers will not abuse Section 2.1, but the EQT lawsuit suggests that it will be used in an offensive, aggressive nature. It’s bad policy [and] it’s a bad provision for landowners and royalty owners.”