Gas drilling in Noxen may start next month
97-acre farm
among properties
with leases
By Patrick Sweet
Staff Writer
NOXEN — Chief Oil and
Gas may begin construction
on a natural gas well just a few
miles north of the border
between Luzerne and Wyo-
ming counties as soon as the
second week of July.
Off Route 29 in Noxen,
short stakes mark the future
location of the drilling pad
on Robert Longmore’s 97-
acre farm. The state Depart-
ment of Environmental Pro-
tection is currently review-
ing the Texas-based gas
company’s permit to place
and operate a well it filed
May 11.
The farm is near proper-
ties that are part of the Nox-
en Area Gas Group, a body
of roughly 150 families with
a combined 8,500 acres which
is in the midst of negotiating
a lease with Houston, Texas-
based Carrizo Oil and Gas.
Just down the road from
Longmore, Noxen group orga-
nizer Joel Field verified that
the group is in the final stages
of negotiation with Carrizo.
Field and co-organizer Harry
Traver declined further com-
ment due to the sensitivity of
the negotiations.
“Until things are settled
down, they’d rather not give
any statements,” Harry Trav-
er’s wife, Dawn Traver, said
Monday.
Longmore, 56, has owned
the farm since 1998 and signed
a lease with Chief roughly
four and a half years ago. The
landmen who approached
Longmore about the deal, he
said, made the three-page
lease giving his family $25 per
acre with the minimum 12.5
percent royalty sound like a
good deal.
“We were kind of taken
advantage of four and a half
years ago,” Longmore said. “I
know people getting $6,000 an
acre.”
The lease had almost no
provisions protecting Long-
more’s farm. At the time, the
landmen made it seem unlike-
ly that drilling would ever
commence during the terms
WB_VOICE - CVDAILY - 5 - 06/15/10
Robert Longmore stands next to a stake on his 97-acre farm in Noxen. The stake is a place marker for where Chief Oil and Gas
will begin drilling into the Marcellus Shale next month.
of his lease, which ends May
15, 2011.
Chief Oil and Gas media
contact Ben McCue attempted
to reach operations employees
for comment Monday after-
noon but they were unavail-
able by press time.
Since Longmore signed,
though, he said his experience
with the company has been
much more positive.
Earlier this year, the Long-
mores were given the opportu-
nity to amend the lease.
“They proposed some
amendments to the lease,”
Longmore said, “so we coun-
tered with some amendments
with some environmental
stuff.”
Chief offered to reopen the
terms of the lease in order to
add protections for the com-
pany in anticipation of a
Pennsylvania Supreme Court
decision that could have inval-
idated thousands of gas leases
where gas companies were
deducting production costs
from the state minimum roy-
alty.
The opinion on the case
was an interpretation of the
Pennsylvania’s Minimum
Royalty Act which establishes
the 12.5 percent royalty
citizensvoice Search natural gas leases in Luzerne County
in our Natural Gas Leases database at www.
citizensvoice.com/drilling.
requirement for all oil or natu-
ral gas recovered from a well
but doesn’t stipulate when to
calculate the royalty.
The court ultimately decid-
ed in favor of the gas compa-
nies roughly a week after the
Longmores and Chief final-
ized the revised lease.
The Longmores added
amendments that protected
ground and surface water,
along with the 0.25-mile
stretch of Bowmans Creek
that runs through the proper-
ty.
Longmore’s son, Josh
Longmore, manages the
Luzerne County Conserva-
tion District and helped his
father amend the lease.
“Unfor tunately, they
signed a very basic lease that
didn’t have some of the pro-
tections that the newer leases
have,” Josh Longmore said.
“Our biggest goal, our big-
gest hope is that the property
maintains its natural beauty,
its agricultural purpose.”
The younger Longmore
doesn’t have any stake in his
WB_VOICE/PAGES [T05] | 06/14/10
parents’ farm, but felt that it
was necessary to help. He
and his father combed
through leases that they
found online and pulled out
the clauses that fit their
needs.
“There was like three or
four different categories of
amendments,” Longmore
said.
Chief accepted 90 percent
of their roughly 20 amend-
ments, Longmore said.
The company did draw the
line on an amendment that
would have prohibited the
company from disposing cut-
tings — the rock equivalent
to sawdust — on the pad. The
company argued it would be
cost-prohibitive to haul it off-
site, Longmore said.
“I really got the impres-
sion that they weren’t hiding
anything from us,” Long-
more said. “They were will-
ing to answer every question
we had.”
psweet@citizensvoice.com 570-821-2112
23:11 | SUPERIMPWB
PSU study questioned over industry tie
By Genaro C. Armas
Associated Press Writer
STATE COLLEGE — A
Penn State study that
paints a rosy forecast on
the economic potential of
natural gas drilling has
been greeted with skepti-
cism from a citizens’ group
and a think tank that favors
a severance tax largely
because the research was
funded by an industry
group.
The Marcellus Shale
Coalition will pay more
than $50,000 for the study
released last month co-
a u t h o r e d i n p a r t by
researchers at Penn State’s
College of Earth and Min-
eral Sciences, the universi-
ty said.
The industry group, in a
release on its website, has
boasted that among key
findings are that “safe and
steady development of
clean-burning natural gas”
in Pennsylvania had the
potential to create 212,000
new jobs over the next
MARK MORAN / THE CITIZENS’ VOICE
decade, along with thou-
sands already created.
The study also said gas
drilling-related activities
could create more than
$1.8 billion in state and
local tax revenues over the
next 18 months. Skeptics
are wary of results, espe-
cially at a time when law-
makers are weighing the
merits of installing a sev-
erance tax on natural gas
extracted from the rich
THE CITIZENS’ VOICE
reserve that lies deep
underneath most of Penn-
sylvania.
The study was an update
of a report last summer
from the same researchers,
and the Marcellus Shale
Coalition paid more than
$43,000 for that work.
TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 2010 – 5
“What they are doing is
distorting the discussion in
Pennsylvania,” Jon Bogle,
a member of the Responsi-
ble Drilling Alliance, said
in a phone interview,
“because they’ve been able
to use Penn State as an
authority in what they
say.”