Gas-drilling case settled
XTO offer taken after 2-year suit
From the Article by David Beard, Morgantown Dominion Post, November 29, 2013
A Marion County landowner’s federal lawsuit to throw a gas-drilling company off his land has been settled out of court.
Richard Cain sued XTO Energy — an Exxon subsidiary — about horizontal gas wells on his land that also drain gas from neighboring tracts. Cain said XTO had no right to use his only drawing gas from neighboring mineral tracts.
Cain’s complaint said XTO planned for a total of three well pads with 18 horizontal gas wells. Those wells would drain the minerals under him and up to 3,000 acres of mineral tracts around him. But all the surface burdens would be his.
“I got involved in this case,” McMahon said in a release issued after The Dominion Post called his office, “to try to set a precedent in the West Virginia Supreme Court. Mr. Cain really wanted to protect not only this piece of recreational property, but also other properties, including his home property and the properties of others in the state, where the drillers were headed next.”
But the case, begun in June 2011, dragged on too long, McMahon said. Cain suffered some financial difficulties, “and the company finally made him an offer he was not in a position to turn down. We appreciate that he hung in as long as he did.”
McMahon said that settlement papers haven’t been signed and he wasn’t at liberty to discuss possible future activity on the Cain property at this time.
XTO referred questions to its parent, Exxon, which did not respond to a request for comment.
McMahon said in the release, “Our position is that the law is clear. A driller has no right to put a pipeline across your land from a well above, and producing gas from, a neighboring mineral tract. If there is no right to disturb your land for just a pipeline, then there certainly is no right to use your land to put one of these enormous, long lasting, property devaluing, and potentially dangerous Marcellus well pads on you with multiple horizontal wells that produce gas from neighboring mineral tracts. They have less need for your surface for horizontal drilling because they can drill to the minerals under you from a mile away.”
McMahon said SORO is again looking for the right test case to take to the state Supreme Court.
“We think the law is clear based on legal treatises and cases on coal mining, but there is no West Virginia Supreme Court case on this issue for horizontal gas we l l s, ” he said. “As a result, the companies get away with having their landmen tell surface owners that the company has a right to put these awful well pads on them, and maybe offering them what the land is worth to the surface owner, but not what the location is worth to the driller.
“Most people’s life savings are tied up in their home and land,” he said.
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