Pennsylvania Dormant Rights Dilemma

  Hi all. This is my first post but I'm a longtime student of this site.

  My issue deals with some acreage in the Mahoning twp/Pulaski twp area of Lawrence county deemed un-leasable by Western/Hilcorp due to a sentence in an 1878 deed in which the seller reserved the right to haul away oil by horse and cart. Any current heirs of that seller are unknown.

  My layman's understanding of the Pa. Dormant Mineral Rights Code is that if the Mineral Rights owner is unknown, the state collects the royalties, holds them in escrow for a set period of time, and absent anyone proving ownership, keeps them.  

  Pa State Senator Yaw & Rep. Godshall each independently sponsored legislation in 2013 to restore the mineral rights to the surface owner after "X" years of unknown ownership & dormancy. Neither of these bills made it to a vote & nothing pertinent was introduced during the 2014 legislative season.

  With all the Hilcorp drilling activity around this property, I feel I shouldn't wait much longer for the lawmakers to remedy this situation, which leads me to plan B - a Quiet Title action in the courts. 

  Would any of our G.M.S. in-house counselors be kind enough to offer some guidance as to the Quiet Title process? It would also be very helpful to hear from any landowners who've been through this process.  

 

                                                                                                                  Zeb

 

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Frank Walker on September 24, 2014 at 12:40am

You're fighting more than just the title reservation you mentioned.  You're fighting the ubiquity of NG (virtually) all across PA and nearby states, including both Marcellus and (now) Utica, too.  The gas companies have so many options!

I don't think a quiet title action can fix this.  That's why new legislation was proposed.  But, especially in Pennsylvania, the concept of property rights is deeply, deeply, ingrained in most citizens.  That's likely why the proposed new legislation ran into difficulty.

What's not clear to me is why a deed reservation relating solely and specifically to oil would also interfere with development of the property for NG.  I think the courts would be quite narrow in interpretation of something like that.  Is it that Western/Hilcorp is simply refusing to sign a lease limited to NG, in order to keep their options open, and/or because elimination of oil from any lease is outside their company policy?

Permalink Reply by Oliver Perry on September 24, 2014 at 10:37am

Here are two good GMS threads on the subject. In the second one, on page two, Lisa.McManus who is an O&G attorney explains the current law well. You can't quiet title to minerals you don't own.

http://gomarcellusshale.com/forum/topics/abandoned-mineral-rights-i...

http://gomarcellusshale.com/forum/topics/half-mineral-rites-not-min...

Permalink Reply by Zeb on September 24, 2014 at 4:38pm

  Oliver - Thanks for finding the older threads. It doesn't look promising but I may have to lawyer up & decide whether to fight for it or just put it behind me.

Permalink Reply by Zeb on September 24, 2014 at 4:33pm

  Frank - Thanks for your insight. I'm not sure what their primary motivation is for denying the lease. My experience with Western Land Services is that the people making the decisions are pretty well insulated from the landowners asking the questions, so you don't get many direct answers.

  I don't consider myself a government conspiracist, but it's easy to see the vested interest the state lawmakers have in leaving things stay as they are.

Permalink Reply by Jack Young on September 25, 2014 at 7:36am
You can't take oil rights with a quiet title action. But with all the genealogy information that's available these days, finding heirs from 1878 is definitely possible. Tracking them down is the best option. I wouldn't wait for a law that gives OGMs to the surface owner for free. Those sound nice, but taking away a person's property without compensation is very hard to do under our legal system. If someone tracks the heirs down and they show up later, they'll have a good chance no matter what laws the State passes. So I always track down the heirs if at all possible when I have a problem like this.
Permalink Reply by Zeb on September 25, 2014 at 9:49am

  It reads as if you deal with these issues professionally.  What do you do for a living?

Permalink Reply by Elnathan Cory on September 26, 2014 at 5:05pm

Call S.R. Law in Slippery Rock. They know how to handle this through the court system. They will find all heirs to this and in the end get a judges order to give you all rights. It will cost you some $ but in the end there will be no question about this "period". Talk to Atty Ron Coyer or Amy Malloy.

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