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Permalink Reply by John Harrison on March 2, 2012 at 4:42am

The situation regarding the distance from the horizontal well bore to unleased property and the border line of a unit can be whatever the gas company wants.  In the Way unit next to my property in SE Bradford County in PA, the 1H well which just started producing, is closer than 100 feet to unleased property on the east side and within 100 feet of the unit boundary on the west side.  To add insult to injury the gas company can change the unit any time they want to by filing the change in the county courthouse.

The state of PA seems to think that having no laws governing setbacks or units is a good idea.  The gas company execs in Texas and Oklahoma must be highfiving each other all the time celebrating their good fortune.  

I have 180 acres next to this Way well, which along with 4 other wells within 1 mile of my property are producing at an average of 6 million cubic feet of gas a day.  At a public meeting last week Chesapeake said this is almost double the average for their wells in PA and these wells are choked back as much as possible because of the low price currently for natural gas.  At a separate individual meeting they offered me $100 dollars per acre to lease my land!  

I know the folks in New York State are anxious to get into the shale gas business, but you should be thankful that your state has laws to protect the landowner.  In PA the landmans threat that "if you don't lease your land to us, we will just take your gas anyway" is absolutely true.  They are doing it.

A couple of years ago, Chesapeake leased the land under the Susquehanna River for the lower third of its path through Bradford County for about 6  million dollars and 20 % royalty on 1500 acres.  The land under the river for the upper two-thirds in Bradford County has not been leased. The gas production units include the river bottom for the leased area but they all go right up to the rivers edge for the rest of the county.  Hopefully this cash strapped state will see they have a lot of skin in this game and will wake up and  realize that letting gas companies operate with no laws isn't good for your wallet.  That sucking sound you hear is money leaving landowners pockets in Pennsylvania and going to Texas and Oklahoma.

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Permalink Reply by Clinton44 on February 29, 2012 at 6:19am

Thanks Dennis,

When you mention filling in wells do you mean bringing the rig back in to drill more horizontal bores on a unit??

If that is the case what kind of time frame does that depend upon??

I guess also it would depend upon what they can market the gas for, if it would be profitable enough to bring the rig back in after say 8 to 10 years after the original wells production falls into the area of not being profitable.

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Permalink Reply by Clinton44 on March 1, 2012 at 5:32pm

Dennis you still out there See my post above regarding filling in wells.. Thanks!!

On another note just got some exciting news today!! In regard to my bottom hole location in respect to property lines.

Anadarko responded to my request for information and informed us that 14 of our acres are pooled into the unit where the wells ended close to the property lines total acreage in the unit is 943. I realize that is a small percentage but better than nothing!!

So we are now in two seperate drilling units with six horizontal well bores on each unit!!!  

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Permalink Reply by Clinton44 on March 1, 2012 at 6:28pm

Thanks!!

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Permalink Reply by Clinton44 on March 2, 2012 at 12:34pm

Thanks John and Drill Baby Drill!! Thanks for the information dont know if you noticed my earlier post, Found out 14 of our acres were pooled into the drilling unit that had bottom hole locations close to property lines and we have 42 acres in another unit. So we lucked out!!

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