Gas Leases

It was a year ago, when men from the oil and gas companies knocked on the door of Stephen Woloszyn’s dairy farm in the small Cattaraugus County village of Delevan.

They wanted to drill for natural gas on his property.

“They showed up at my house, and told me who they were,” said Woloszyn, whose farm has been in the family for more than 50 years. “I had two different outfits asking me for a lease.”

Soaring oil and natural gas prices have the industry turning over every rock in search of promising new deposits. But what’s really captured the imagination is a giant natural gas reservoir running beneath four states, including New York’s Southern Tier.

The potential is huge. And some lucky landowners are striking it rich.

“It’s extremely significant as far as the natural gas that’s expected to be recovered,” said Brad Gill, executive director of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York. “It’s put New York State on the map with the very large independent oil and natural gas companies from around the country.”

Company land men are swooping into counties, like Broome and Tioga, to lease property for drilling.

Along the way, they’re doling out tens of millions of dollars for the mineral rights to thousands of acres of farmland throughout south central New York and across the border in Pennsylvania.

“This is one of the biggest booms New York has ever seen,” said Arthur Van Tyne, an oil and natural gas consultant from Wellsville in Allegany County. “It’s amazing the amount of money being spent here, and the amount of acreage being taken.”

Landowners in these parts have yet to hit it big. But they’re watching closely, hoping they’ll be the next Jed Clampett, now that gas companies are sniffing around parts of Erie, Cattaraugus and Allegany counties looking to make a deal.

“It’s going on, on a daily basis,” said Robert Christman, the Allegany County clerk. At least a half dozen land men, from places such as Texas and Oklahoma, file into the clerk’s office in Belmont each day to pore over county maps, land deeds and old lease agreements.

“It’s exciting,” Christman said.

The commotion is over a geological formation known as the Marcellus shale. And among those stirring the excitement is Gary Lash, a Fredonia State College professor of geosciences

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