Real Estate & Property Law

Clearville Storage Rights

By Alan Ackerman

We Are Central PA

A Texas-based company wants to put natural gas wells in Clearville, Bedford County, and they're trying to use eminent domain to do it. Some property owners there say they're being treated unfairly.

Paul Stup and other several landowners had a lease agreement with a company PG&E. That company drilled on their property and the people got royalty checks from the natural gas produced. In their contract, they had a clause that it would be just drilling and removing not storage.

In storage a company brings in natural gas from outside the area and puts it into the ground like a storage tank.

A couple years ago the PG&E sold the lease agreements to Spectra, a Texas-based natural gas company, and Spectra wants to store natural gas in Bedford County…

Most states will utilize their gas fields for storage and resale.  This is extremely profitable for the utility company 'subsidiaries'; which receive hefty stipends for storage and resale during high need months.  The owners can be paid fairly when eminent domain dispossess their ownership rights, but only when if the just compensation process is fairly utilized.

Full post as published by National Eminent Domain Blog on August 01, 2008 (boomark / email).