Lease Pooling
Potential changes surrounding lease pooling rules are being discussed in the Pennsylvania Legislature. These changes, if enacted, would require landowners, under certain conditions, to lease mineral rights to existing drillers in the area if it is in the broader public interest.
When an oil or gas company leases land, there is often a clause in the contract to allow the company to consolidate and combine leased land with adjoining leased tracts to form a pool, or a unit. The benefit to the oil and natural gas company is the unification of leases into a common pool under one drilling production company and utilizing one common underground geological reservoir. The benefit to the landowners is sharing the proceeds of any royalties in proportion to the amount of property that they own in the unit. The benefit to the environment is fewer surface disruptions, because one rig can rextend to other parts of the reservoir in the "pool" underground, through horizontal drilling.
The issue of lease pooling may be taken up for debate in Harrisburg in February of 2011.
