Burning Questions Update: A Leaser's Remorse

The burning questions just keep piling up. Last week we asked listeners and readers to send us their queries about the Marcellus Shale boom. So far, we’ve gotten hundreds. Some just can’t wait for an answer, like this one from Ottsville resident Sally Mirick. Mirick says she signed a gas lease several years ago because her land sits above the Lockatong Shale. The Lockatong is a thin strip of shale that runs through Bucks County. It’s not expected to be as lucrative as the Marcellus, but some test wells have been drilled. Mirick says a company representative told her the gas would be taken whether she signed or not. Here’s part of a letter she wrote to the League of Women Voters.

I am the unfortunate owner of one of these leases which was signed in 2005, long before  public information had been made available about the phenomenon of fracking. At the time, no one we talked to on the local or state level had any useful information to give us. I, my neighbors, and probably everyone else in this area, were told by the gas company representative that we might as well sign and get some reimbursement, because the gas company  could and would  pull it from below our property whether we signed or not.

Mirick’s story is one I’ve been told over and over again by landowners across the state who thought if they didn’t sign a lease, the companies could take the gas anyway and not compensate them. Now she wants to get out of her lease, and wonders if she can argue fraud to do so. That’s a question for a more advanced legal mind than mine, but check back later in the week and we’ll try to have an answer.

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