Gas Leases

The municipal authority agreed to start a leasing process that is expected to yield more than $2.7 million for gas rights over the next five years.
The board will lease 1,379 acres on Laurel Mountain to GFI Oil & Gas, of Williamsport, for a $2,000-per-acre signing bonus, according to executive director Timothy Resh.

[Read more →]

Tom Stark wrestled with a half-million dollar question on Thursday.
The Washington Township resident questioned whether he should sign with the Wyoming County Landowners Group or hold out for a better offer as he sat at a table at the Shadowbrook Inn & Resort.
As Stark weighed his options, he noted that a lease through the landowners [...]

[Read more →]

Natural gas wells drilled this year on Vandergrift Borough property have been controversial. When drilling one of the wells, contractors hit a pocket of methane gas from an old underground well. That caused the state to order precautions to protect East Vandergrift and Vandergrift residents living near the wells.
So there are well-founded concerns about gas [...]

[Read more →]

Speculators are coming in droves to western Pennsylvania where they are buying mineral rights with hopes of striking it rich.
They’re after a vast shale bed, rich in natural gas that could potentially add more than $100 billion annually to the state economy.

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

As the search for natural gas intensifies in the Endless Mountains, the Wyoming County Recorder of Deeds office has also seen an avalanche of paperwork.
The processing of more than 1,000 leases has had a dramatic effect on the office, generating an increase in filing fees, as well as a need for additional staff.
“We’re getting hammered [...]

[Read more →]

La. - Chris Moreno lost his job managing a print shop two years ago, just after his wife became pregnant and they’d started building a house on 40 acres near the shores of Caddo Lake.
He fretted he’d have to relinquish his humble piece of paradise, where he indulged his country boy’s passion for hunting raccoons [...]

[Read more →]

A packed Tunkhannock Area High School auditorium buzzed on Wednesday evening with one topic: natural-gas lease profits.
The rush is on in western Wyoming County, with the Wyoming County Landowners’ Group and its more than 45,000 acres in the gas-filled Marcellus Shale region recently accepting a lease agreement with the Unit and Citrus oil and gas [...]

[Read more →]

With the current energy crunch, could a speculative gas leasing frenzy take place in Botetourt again?
Apparently so.
Right now a similar event is under way in Western Pennsylvania. Published reports indicate that landowners have been inundated by natural gas companies seeking to snatch up mineral rights.

[Read more →]

When an oil company approached Bob and Gladys McArthur in 2006 about leasing their Hillsdale County land to search for oil, they looked at it as a little extra cash in the bank.
Oklahoma-based Continental Resources was one in a string of about five companies over the years to come to them with an oil lease.
“We [...]

[Read more →]