Pennsylvania State Representative wants to repeal new gas pooling law

Pennsylvania State Representative Michele Brooks plans to introduce legislation that would repeal a recent law allowing oil and gas drillers to pool leased properties into one unit for horizontal wells, as long as the oil and gas contracts in effect do not prohibit these combinations. Until the Pennsylvania House added two sentences allowing the forced pooling of leases, this law was simply intended to require natural gas companies to standardize all deductions listed on royalty check stubs. Representative Brooks wants to repeal the law’s pooling language in order to allow individual landowners to re-negotiate their leases.

Citing the new law, natural gas producer EQT Corporation filed a complaint on July 22, 2013, against 70 Pennsylvania landowners who hold old oil and gas leases without pooling provisions. EQT claims that it was barred from entering these properties to do preliminary work for natural gas drilling and that the landowners assert that EQT does not have the right to pool their leases. See previous blog dated August 2, 2013, “Pennsylvania Landowners Sued Under New Pooling Law.”
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