Real Estate & Property Law

Property Owner Complains About Pooling

By Alan Ackerman

    Ron Kamzelski wrote a letter to the Editor of the Wellsboro Pennsylvania Gazette explaining his anger about eminent domain acquisition to require forced pooling.
    The underlying problem remains one of how you value a lease.  While Mr. Kamzelski recognizes there are leases for $1 an acre, there are also leases worth $5,000 per acre.  What will happen over the coming years is the acquiring parties will simply state that they want to hold at their lowest number, try to have people buy at the lowest number and then try to establish that lowest number as the value in future acquisitions.
    It is a long treacherous downhill ride for property owners facing the pooling problem.    

Wellsboro Gazette

Meanwhile your bought and paid for politicians propose that gas companies can pool your assets without your consent for way less compensation than could be achieved by free market negotiation. Maybe forced pooling made little difference for shallow gas wells when leases were only $1 an acre, but now that they are over $5,000 an acre for some Marcellus Shale leases, forced pooling clearly benefits only the gas companies. What company would bother to lease your land if they knew they get your gas without a lease and why would they pay you more than the minimum 12.5 percent royalty?

Now pipeline developers want the right of eminent domain for gathering systems. Eminent domain has long been a mainstay of interstate gas transmission pipelines but not gathering lines. All the thousands of wells planned for our area are going to be connected to a main transmission line. If the shortest route for their gathering line is through your property, that's where they want it to go with or without your permission.

Full post as published by National Eminent Domain Blog on August 30, 2010 (boomark / email).