Gas Leases

Here’s why the state says not to trust anyone who wants you to sign a gas drilling lease:

A gas company agent had just convinced an upstate family to sign. Now he was knocking on a reluctant neighbor’s door.

The agent, called a land man, wanted to squeeze the neighbor, whose daughter happened to be getting married at home in a few months. So the land man mentions that he can’t guarantee there wouldn’t be noisy drilling next door on the wedding day — unless, of course, the parents of the bride signed a lease with a no-drilling-on-wedding-day clause.

Stories like that, told by Assistant Attorney General Mike Danaher, are why the state just issued a guide for signing gas leases. Pressure tactics might become all too common in Sullivan County, where the natural gas rush is on.

At least one farming family in Callicoon was already told by a land man that the leasing price of $2,500 per acre would drop to $2,000 if they didn’t sign over rights to their farm that day. They’re still deciding, but more than 5,000 acres have already been leased in Sullivan, with tens of thousands more on the way.

This is why Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office has issued the gas lease brochure.

The bottom line?

Don’t do it yourself.

“You should get a private attorney,” Danaher said at a recent gas leasing forum at Sullivan West High School.

And, he added, you can negotiate the terms of the deal.

To get a better lease, you can talk to more than one company — and form a coalition with your neighbors, just as several landowners with some 62,000 acres have done in the western Sullivan towns of Fremont, Delaware and Callicoon.

And remember, drilling for gas isn’t just about gas — or money. It’s about your land, for generations to come.

“Do not be blinded by dollar signs,” Danaher said. “Think of surface rights, environmental concerns and what happens to (your) well.”

[Via The Times Herald]