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Columbia County group offers gas drilling lease negotiator

Offer extended to interested landowners in Ross and Fairmount townships.

By Rory Sweeney rsweeney@timesleader.com
Staff Writer

ROSS TWP. – For a limited time, landowners looking for a natural-gas drilling lease have a commitment-free offer to get a low-cost lease negotiator.

Read more Natural Gas Leases - Marcellus Shale articles

On the web

• Columbia County Landowners Coalition
• South West Ross Township Property Group

The Columbia County Landowners Coalition has a secured a consultant from Texas to negotiate a deal, but he’s starting soon and only doing it once.

The consultant, who has experience with fossil-fuel wells in the Midwest, is charging $1 per acre and expects to begin negotiations at $2,900 per acre for sign-on bonuses and extraction royalties of 18.75 percent, the executive committee of the Southwest Ross Township Property Group announced at a meeting on Tuesday evening.

Those figures exceed the usual for contracts inked in this region.

The Ross group, led by the committee of eight volunteers actively researching the situation, has been holding meetings to explain issues regarding gas leases and sign up landowners within its borders. It’s focusing on a roughly 10,000-acre region and hopes to amass a no-commitment membership of at least 4,000 acres within there.

The Columbia County offer is extended to interested landowners in the vicinity, including the Ross Township group and one in Fairmount Township. Landowners can sign up at the coalition’s Web site, but they must act soon.

According to the Ross group, the coalition expects to begin negotiating in a matter of weeks and hopes to have a contract to sign by the fall. And the consultant, who is doing a favor for a friend, plans to return to retirement after completing the deal.

If it sounds too good to be true, the suspicion might be warranted. The Ross committee acknowledged that the timetable is more rushed than they’d prefer, but they argue that there’s no commitment and people can opt out if they dislike the negotiated deal.

According to the committee, the Columbia County group is moving quickly because sign-on bonuses are considered regular income, and the group fears the changing political climate next year will mean tax increases for upper tax brackets.

What’s next?

The Southwest Ross Township Property Group is holding its next informational meeting at 7 p.m. July 29 at the Sweet Valley fire hall on Main Road.