| Surface owners' group to hold meeting here
By David Hedges, Publisher
www.thetimesrecord.net
A new organization formed to help property owners deal with oil and gas exploration on their land is coming to Roane County to spread its message and recruit members.
The West Virginia Surface Owners' Rights Organization will hold a public meeting Thursday at the Heritage Park Community Building in Spencer. The two-hour meeting is scheduled to start at 6 p.m.
This is the second regional membership and informational meeting the group has held. The first meeting was last month in Weston.
"We got calls all day about flooding in that area and people were wondering if anybody would show up," said Dave McMahon, a public interest lawyer working with the group. "When we got there, 102 people had showed up."
The group was formed last year by landowners, McMahon and the W.Va. Citizen Action Group.
McMahon said funding comes from membership dues of $30 per year, along with grants and donations.
"Drilling permits in West Virginia have skyrocketed from 900 per year to over 3,000, so we're hearing from lots of furious landowners who believe they've been run over," he said.
A $400 million verdict in Roane County has also drawn the attention of royalty owners.
McMahon said recent court rulings indicate that both surface owners and royalty owners "are being abused by operators."
The group was active during a special legislative session last August, in which lawmakers considered a proposal that critics said would have undone the Roane County verdict in what is known as the Tawney case.
The WVSORO newsletter said that the proposal was supported by the oil and gas industry, and Governor Manchin, and would have "let companies off the hook after they were found guilty of shortchanging landowners more than $133 million in royalty payments."
The jury also awarded royalty owners $270 million in punitive damages, bringing the total verdict to more than $400 million.
In spite of their support for royalty owners, McMahon said the primary focus of the group remains surface owners' rights.
"We have had hundreds of members join, but only about 30 percent of them are royalty owners," he said.
"This is more about the land owner who walks outside his door and finds a surveyor's stake for a gas well and nobody has even told him they were coming," he said.
The group is proposing a surface owners' bill of rights that would give landowners more say in the location of wells and access roads and other matters dealing with oil and gas exploration on private property.
"When it comes to protecting property owners against the abuses of the oil and gas drillers, the playing field is tilted about as far as it can go in favor of the drillers," said Gary Zuckett, executive director of W.Va. Citizen Action Group.
He said the oil and gas laws have not been updated in more than 25 years. Under the existing law, he said landowners get a notice in the mail only 15 days before a permit to drill on their property is approved.
He said the landowner can send comments to the W.Va. Office of Oil and Gas, but under current law there is very little the state can do to make changes in the locations of roads, well sites and gas lines.
"These are some of the problems (we) want to tackle," he said.
A call was placed to the W.Va. Oil and Natural Gas Association for a response to the allegations, but the call was not returned.
Another meeting for surface owners is being planned for early February in Boone County and the organization is also sponsoring a surface owners rights day on Feb. 6 at the State Capitol to encourage property owners to come and tell their stories to lawmakers.
More information on the W.Va. Surface Owners' Rights organization is available on the Internet at wvsoro.org. The W.Va. Oil and Natural Gas Association also has a Web site, wvonga.com.
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