1880s Land Deal Has Potential To Upend Present-Day Drilling Leases

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

September 23, 2011 | 4:39 PM

More on that Susquehanna County court case that could have major ramifications for natural gas extraction leases across Pennsylvania.
The Post-Gazette took a look at the issue this morning:

The parties involved are arguing over a 130-year-old Susquehanna County transaction, which reserved “half the minerals and petroleum oils” for those selling the land.
The current owners now say they should be the sole owners of any Marcellus gas produced because that agreement did not mention gas rights.

Legal observers caution that the resulting court decision could have ramifications for shale leases throughout the state.
The lawsuit raises questions about whether there are separate legal rights to the shale rock itself compared to the gas trapped inside, and if so, who can claim which when the paperwork is unclear.
“The practical impact is that right now, a company is not going to know who to deal with,” said Ross Pifer, director of Agricultural Law Resource and Reference Center at Penn State University’s Dickinson School of Law.
The main issue: surface and mineral rights are sold separately in Pennsylvania. If a person owns the mineral rights under his property, he can enter into a lease agreement with a gas driller.

If, all of the sudden, natural gas isn’t a mineral, that could creates a major legal problem.