Good Faith Attempt?

One of the usual forced pooling requirements is that a "good faith attempt" has been made to reach agreement on a lease.  Here,on one side, there are 100+ "holdout" landowners willing to negotiate a lease through a coalition.  On the other side, the predominant private land leaseholder in the county, who replys "We're not interested in discussing it." (paraphrased). 

It would be satisfying to think that this refusal might come back to bite East in any future discussions of the necessity for forced pooling (to capture "holdouts") and/or whether a good faith attempt was made if forced pooling becomes law. 

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Lynn Wigglesworth on October 11, 2010 at 11:37am
The legislation I've read only mentioned that the O&G company had to make the "fair' attempt; it didn't say anything about the landowner. I'm afraid that East would point at all the people who accepted their cruddy offer and say "see?". Their offer was good enough for all those people, these others are just being stubborn. I'd like to know who gets to decide what is a fair attempt.
Permalink Reply by William Ladd on October 11, 2010 at 12:31pm
What gets my goat is that East apparently has not made a serious attempt to make a deal with Dominion for any kind of drilling through or under the so called storage area. Something I have not mentioned before is every so often the pumping station at Sabinsville will bleed off a huge amount of gas. We live not over a couple of miles as the crow flies from Sabinsville and can plainly hear the ear shattering blast. One time it was so loud that I thought a pipeline had burst. And it lasted a good ten minutes.

I'd like to lease and so would my neighbors. We have estimated that we have close two 2000 acres that could be leased in the marcellus shale Most of this acreage is adjoining each other. I was also told that East has a deal with Dominion to access about 10% of their main gas pipeline when their wells go online.

Bill L.
aka Bummy
Permalink Reply by Ann Ticopa on October 11, 2010 at 12:21pm
It really depends on the legislation. The draft law that circulated allowed little time and limited reasons to ask for a hearing. Then there would be the question of whether the hearing would be something one could do him/herself or if it would require a lawyer. Where would the hearing be? Would the gasco's standard lease be considered a good faith effort? It would be the landman's word (and records) against the landowner's. I don't know, but I think an individual landowner would have an uphill battle.
Permalink Reply by Brian V. on October 11, 2010 at 2:18pm
The only way forced pooling will work out for the landowner is if there are spacing regulations attached that requires DEP input and approval on spacing units. Also, there has to be some way for a non-operating company to take part in the cost of operations. Basically, if ERM decides they want to drill and you are not leased to them but decide to lease with a competitor, that competitor has to have some type of incentive to make a competitive offer to you despite not being the operator on the well to be drilled.

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