This article originally provided by The Charleston Gazette

August 25, 2007

Surface owners’ group membership expands

By Tom Searls
Staff writer

Controversial changes in oil and natural gas contracts proposed by Gov. Joe Manchin has led to a quick-rising new organization designed to fight in the legislative halls for those that own only surface rights to their land.

Organizers hope to more than double their membership — already at about 100 — in quick fashion.

“In a couple more weeks we’ll double that membership,” predicted Gary Zuckett, a veteran lobbyist for consumer causes and state chairman of the Mountain Party.

Zuckett and others have formed the West Virginia Surface Owners’ Rights Organization, the group that asked lawmakers last week to hold a public hearing about Manchin’s proposal to change how most landowners are compensated for the natural gas on their land. With slightly more than a day’s notice before the hearing, Zuckett was surprised at the large number of people who showed up.

“People came out of the woodwork for the hearing,” he said. “People we didn’t even know of.”

Many of those were small landowners whose mineral rights were sold or leased more than 100 years ago. A number told horror stories of gas and oil firms cutting giant swaths of old-growth trees in their effort to build better roads to well heads.

But others represented large landholding companies, many located outside West Virginia, who years ago leased their mineral rights to others.

Zuckett noted the mineral rights holder has superiority over the surface rights owner and has authority to place roads and machinery wherever they desire.

“It’s not a very level playing field,” he said.

The Ritchie County resident found that out for himself. While he has never owned the mineral rights on his 50-acre farm, Zuckett found out in the 1980s that he had no control over what the drilling firms did when they placed three new wells on his land.

“I have personally experienced the frustration that many people have,” he said.

He recalled asking drillers not to set up in the middle of his best hay field to no avail.

“I never got a dime in damages,” he said.

The new organization plans to find out what other states are doing and hold town hall-type meetings across the state to gauge the interest of the public.

“We feel landowners should be compensated for damages,” he said.

In their initial recruiting letter, the group points out that only Texas has more oil and gas wells than West Virginia and that new drilling permits have tripled in the past several years. At the same time, they have noted oil and gas has been found in 51 of the state’s 55 counties.

WVSORO’s first mailing went to 150 people, asking that they spend $30 to become members of the group and help lobby the Legislature.

The new organization hopes to create “the political capital to make these companies more responsible and environmentally compliant ...,” the letter states.

Zuckett hopes to grow the membership to 500 by January. A new mailing will go to several thousand people next week after members went to the state Department of Environmental Protection “and looked up all the people who are being drilled on right now,” he said.

One thing Zuckett has discovered is a Pennsylvania law forcing mineral rights owners to compensate surface owners at the rate of $5,000 an acre for each acre damaged. The group plans to collect such information for ideas of changing West Virginia laws.

They will be opposed by the oil and gas industry, which announced earlier this week it will run a three-year ad campaign across the state to raise awareness of its positive contributions to the state.

“We are just getting started,” Zuckett said. “We don’t even have a Web page yet.”

For more information, call 346-5891.

To contact staff writer Tom Searls, use e-mail or call 348-5198.