More than 15 years ago, many state-level politicians were so eager for gas industry investment in Pennsylvania that they treated drillers as benefactors rather than as a heavy industry requiring rigorous regulation in the public interest.
The state government consistently has been playing catch-up on environmental regulation and enforcement, even as Republican legislators still refuse to impose a fair severance tax on gas extraction, akin to those imposed by every other gas-producing state.
Legislative majorities have been so feckless that they have refused even to ensure that Pennsylvanians who lease their land for drilling get a fair return.
Existing state law says that people who lease their land for drilling are supposed to receive at least 12% of the market value of the gas extracted from beneath their land. But the Legislature has stood by for more than a decade as some drillers deduct their own post production costs — for processing and distribution — from the lease payments to landowners.
In some cases, some lessors have received bills from producers, instead of royalty payments.
Fortunately, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro was among those who recognized that the Legislature was going to serve the industry rather than residents. He took up the cause of aggrieved lessors of the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Landowners Alliance, and announced Monday that his office had reached a royalty settlement with Chesapeake Energy, which for years was the foremost producer in the Northeast Pennsylvania portion of the Marcellus Shale gas field.
Chesapeake will pay $5.3 million in restitution to shortchanged lessors. More important, the deal calls for fair payments going forward.
”The bottom line here is that this settlement … will allow landowners to take a new lease with no deductions,” Shapiro said.
He characterized the lawsuit accurately as “standing up to powerful interests when they try to take advantage of people,” something for which the Legislature clearly has no stomach.
— The Citizens’ Voice, Wilkes-Barre/TNS
