A Pennsylvania House of Representatives committee has passed legislation that would place a five-year moratorium on the leasing of state forest lands for natural gas operations and could make leases harder to get even after the moratorium expires.

HB 2235 would require the state’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) to produce an impact assessment of natural gas operations on state forest lands that have already been leased. After the five-year moratorium expires, the legislation would prohibit DCNR from leasing state forest lands for natural gas operations unless it first determines that the proposed lease “would not unduly compromise the state forest’s ecological, recreational, social and aesthetic values,” according to the bill, which was approved Thursday by the Environmental Resources and Energy Committee.

In November DCNR said it was making nearly 32,000 acres of additional state forest land available for natural gas leasing (see Daily GPI, Nov. 11, 2009). The department said it would open six tracts of land in the prolific Marcellus Shale play, totaling about 31,967 acres, for a lease sale of subsurface oil and gas rights. DCNR has held 73 lease sales since 1947, the last of which was in 2008. About 660,000 acres of forest land currently are under lease for gas production, with about 750 wells in production.

Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell had asked lawmakers to reconsider a proposal to impose a 5% severance tax on natural gas extraction in the Marcellus Shale (see Daily GPI, Feb. 10). The tax proposal was tabled during budget negotiations in the General Assembly last year (see Daily GPI, Jan. 19; Sept. 2, 2009).

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court in an expedited case on Wednesday rejected an attempt by Marcellus Shale landowners to receive higher royalty payments from natural gas operators (see related story).

©Copyright 2010Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.