During drilling boom, property owners seek common ground

The action of 250 landowners in Columbiana County to organize an educational and service group on natural-gas well drilling sets a great example for others – particularly Mahoning County landowners.

Among its laudable goals, the Salem-based Associated Landowners of the Ohio Valley seeks to promote understanding of the complexities of leasing and drilling and to ensure fair deals and protection for private property owners.

The interests of private landowners cannot be ignored. Consider this reflection from Ben Funderberg, vice president at Ohio Valley Energy, an oil-and gas-leasing company based in Austintown: “I have been in this business 37 years, and I have never quite seen the feeding frenzy that I have seen here in the past few months. It really is a land grab.”

Organized efforts, such as those spearheaded by the Columbiana County group, serve as valuable tools at a time such as this. The feeding frenzy to which Funderberg refers has its roots in the Marcellus Shale.

A drilling boom has been under way since 2008 in the Marcellus Shale, a vast underground geologic formation that extends from West Virginia and eastern Ohio through Pennsylvania into southern New York. Some geologists estimate it could yield enough natural gas to supply the entire East Coast for 50 years.

DRILLING BOOM BRINGS BENEFITS

Clearly, this drilling boom brings with it a bounty of benefits for the Mahoning Valley. Job creation is not the least among them. The drilling surge has reinvigorated trucking companies, short-line railroads, quarries and steel-pipe manufacturers, such as the expanding V&M Star in Youngstown.

It also holds potential to benefit thousands in the region by providing cheap and clean natural-gas production for decades to come. And it could loosen us from the tight grip of high-priced America-hating foreign oil producers.

Despite such benefits, however, the rights of private landowners cannot be given short shrift. That’s why groups such as the Land Owners Association of the Ohio Valley prove their worth.

The Columbiana County group, for example, has hired legal counsel from Youngstown to ensure all aspects of leasing agreements are fair, that properties are kept free of damage and contaminants and that property owners are properly compensated.

Such protections are more important now than ever. With the newly Republicanized state and federal legislatures, most political and environmental analysts see current Democrat initiatives at reining in excesses of drilling and oil companies as dead on arrival.

On balance, the Marcellus Shale drilling boom offers the Mahoning Valley a gold mine of short- and long-term riches. But watchdog organizations should keep a vigilant eye over drillers to ensure that private property owners don’t get shafted.