Landowners

Republican lawmakers in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives have renewed their push to shield royalty owners in the state from post-production costs by reintroducing a bill to guarantee payment of the statutory minimum of 12.5% of the value of oil and gas produced under leases.

The Ohio House of Representatives has unanimously passed legislation that would both protect landowners and help oil and gas companies more easily form drilling units by allowing them to unitize state-owned land such as roads, universities and wildlife areas.

With production continuing to outpace takeaway infrastructure in the Bakken oil/gas boom, the North Dakota Petroleum Council (NDPC) has launched an easement information resource for landowners and land agents, hoping to streamline the rights-of-way process for pipeline permitting (see Shale Daily, Oct. 2).

Chesapeake Energy Corp. on Tuesday was ordered to proceed to trial in a Michigan court on one count of racketeering and 20 counts of false pretenses for allegedly defrauding private landowners in the summer of 2010.

A judge in New York State dismissed two lawsuits filed against Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other officials over the ongoing regulatory delay for considering high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF), on the grounds that the plaintiffs in both cases do not have proper legal standing.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. is once again fighting to stave off a class action lawsuit in Pennsylvania as it confronts a growing chorus of those that allege it is improperly deducting post-production costs from royalty payments.

The state, not private landowners, owns the bulk of certain disputed mineral rights in the Bakken Shale oil/natural gas production fields, according to a North Dakota Supreme Court ruling released the day after Christmas. The ruling affects disputed stretches between high- and low-water marks of the Missouri River.

New Mexico oil and natural gas operators and landowners are challenging in federal court a ban on any type of hydrocarbon drilling in Mora County, a sparsely populated jurisdiction in the northeastern section of the state (see Shale Daily,May 13).

A federal judge is considering whether five separate cases against EQT Corp. and Consol Energy Corp. should proceed as class action lawsuits, a decision that could potentially add thousands of plaintiffs in Southwest Virginia to those who allege that the companies cheated them out of millions in royalty payments.