It was a hard choice to make: spend the afternoon raking or head to the Brooktondale Community Center to talk about gas drilling concerns. But 30 people, representing Dryden, Caroline, Danby, Ithaca and Enfield sacrificed the yard work to learn more about gas leases and compulsory integration on March 20.

But first we need a name, said Bill Podulka, who chaired the meeting. He listed a couple dozen names submitted by e-mail and, after some lively discussion the group decided to call itself the “Tompkins Gas Drilling Task Force.” At least for the time being.

“Roll that around in your mouth for awhile and make sure you are happy with it,” Podulka told people after the meeting. “See what your neighbors think when they hear Gas Drilling Task Force.”

Why Compulsory Integration?

Helen Slottje, a senior attorney with the Community Environmental Defense Council in Ithaca, spoke briefly about legal grounds for challenging compulsory integration. She also addressed the prospects for extracting people from leases they felt were obtained under false pretenses.

Compulsory integration arose from a desire to protect landowners. But, Slottje pointed out, some gas company landsmen use it as a threat to force people into leasing their land. Historically, gas and oil ownership was defined by the “rule of capture.” That means that whoever brought the gas to the surface owned it and could sell it. “So to protect your interest in the gas or oil beneath your land, you would have to drill your own well,” Slottje explained.

States developed the idea of “pooling resources” to reduce the number of wells being drilled. That way everyone who lived over a gas or oil reservoir — even those who did not drill a well — would receive payment for the resources extracted.

In New York, when a gas company has leased 60 percent of an area over a gas reservoir, it may integrate the remaining 40 percent of the land into the drilling unit. This works well for oil or gas trapped in a reservoir, Slottje said. But the gas in Marcellus shale is not held in such a reservoir; instead it is trapped in tiny pores of the rock.

“There is little opportunity for the gas trapped in the shale to migrate from one place to another,” Slottje said. “Since there is no pool of resources, the concept of compulsory integration doesn’t seem to apply.”

Releasing natural gas from shale requires breaking the rocks. And, according to the gas companies, their drilling and fracturing technology is so advanced that they can travel, Slottje said. She questions the practice of forcing landowners into drilling units through compulsory integration for exploiting Marcellus and other shales.

“It is a taking,” Slottje said, adding that landowners who don’t lease are, by law, forced to receive the lowest possible royalty. Even when the price of gas falls, as it has done over the past year, gas companies benefit if they can demonstrate to stockholders and lenders that they have large holdings of land leases and active drilling sites.

Slottje noted that there have been compulsory integration hearings for landowners in Trenton-Black River drilling units. Those are pools of gas, she noted, and because of the uneven distribution the gas companies delineate the locations and boundaries of drilling units. “But Marcellus shale is a blanket play,” she said. Because it is found everywhere, DEC could create a grid of drilling units prior to permitting wells.

“The final justification for compulsory integration is expedient resource extraction,” Slottje said. “The current philosophy seems to be that we need it and we need it now.” With industry involved so deeply in gas and oil law-making, Slottje doesn’t see any changes happening quickly to compulsory integration or other laws regarding drilling.

Leasing, however, presents some opportunities for change. “There are rules about fraud and misrepresentation regarding leases,” Slottje said. Typically there is recourse, but the problem is that single landowners are challenging gas companies one at a time. While any single case could be easily dismissed, an accumulation of cases becomes harder for the gas industry to defend.

Slottje suggested that landowners with gas leases work together to show a pattern of fraud. There also needs to be public support for landowners who have been cheated, she noted. Right now the general feeling is that leasing is a good practice, and courts are reluctant to rule against it.

Companies have had about 150 years to develop the language in their leases, Slottje said. Every time something is challenged, they draft new leases incorporating new court precedents. This is why landowners need to talk with each other. One landowner may feel embarrassed by a bad lease. But with the support of others, he can publicize the dishonest practices and alert others about what to avoid.

Regardless of what name they ultimately end up with, Podulka sees the group as a neighborhoodbased organization. “We have a lot of projects to work on, and we’ll probably want to establish a steering committee,” he told Tompkins Weekly.

Podulka explained that the group grew out of the need some residents felt to provide resources to their neighbors who are concerned about the health, environmental, economic and social impacts of industrial drilling. In addition, he sees the group’s role as one of supporting the community in protecting important local assets.

The next meeting of the Tompkins Gas Drilling Task Force will be Tuesday, April 6, at 7 p.m. in the Brooktondale Community Center.

TAGGED WITH: gas drilling, gas leasing, landowners, Marcellus Shale