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Without forced-pooling law, WV gas industry sues landowners to gain access
By Andrew Brown, Charleston Gazette
WEST UNION â When Lorena Krafft received the court summons in 2013, she didn't quite understand what was happening.
Months before, she had received a letter and a draft lease from Antero Resources asking her to sign over a portion of minerals she owns in Harrison County so the company could drill. She ignored that letter and the string of calls that followed. She told the company to consult with her attorney.
It wasn't that Krafft, a resident of Ohio, was opposed to drilling. She had been willing to lease the 15 pieces of property she inherited from her mother in Doddridge and Harrison counties. The problem was that her interactions with Antero had soured because of disagreements over the location of a gas-compressor station and the cutting of trees on land she owns in Doddridge.
She wanted those issues resolved before she would sign a lease with the company.
Instead of bringing the company to the negotiation table, though, Krafft's refusal to sign prompted Antero to file a lawsuit in Harrison County Circuit Court seeking to end her ownership in the tract of minerals.
Without Krafft's signature on a lease, the entire Marcellus Shale well that would be drilled through nearly 14 properties could be put on hold, delaying profits for Antero and the other property owners, who already had signed over their mineral rights.
Krafft's case is just one example of how the oil and gas industry has turned to West Virginia's court system in the absence of a pooling law to force mineral owners to either sign leases or sell their property.
In county courthouses throughout the north-central part of the state, gas companies have filed what are known as partition lawsuits, seeking court-ordered buyouts of partial mineral owners who have yet to sign a lease.
In Doddridge and Harrison counties alone, Antero, one of the region's largest gas producers, has filed nearly two-dozen lawsuits over the past two years. Lawyers who have worked on similar cases in the state say the lawsuits also have been used by other companies, like EQT Corp., in the state's other Marcellus gas-producing counties...
Read more Without forced-pooling law, WV gas industry sues landowners to gain access
By Andrew Brown for the Charleston Gazette
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