North Fayette supervisors OK natural gas lease
Share with others:
Dozens of property owners in North Fayette have signed leases with drilling companies that plan to extract natural gas from the Marcellus Shale bed.
When township officials learned that wellheads are planned for some properties adjacent to publicly owned land, officials decided it was time to sign a lease of its own.
"We could at least have the benefits of the royalties," Community Development Director Brian Temple said.
North Fayette supervisors recently authorized a gas and mineral rights lease with Range Resources LLC, a Texas-based company with regional offices in Canonsburg.
The agreement sets payment to North Fayette at $3,000 per acre, plus a 17.5 percent royalty on gas that is removed and sold from township property.
Township manager Bob Grimm said any earnings would be placed in a fund for capital improvement projects that otherwise would require borrowing.
The five-year lease covers more than 164 acres of township property beneath which natural gas potentially could be extracted. The lease does not grant any surface rights -- meaning no wells, equipment or access roads could sit on township land.
Within about a year, Range Resources plans to build its first well pad on North Road, Mr. Temple said. A well there would be drilled to a depth of about a mile or more. Then a process of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing would extend underground for more than a mile, reaching under the North Branch Road municipal building and park to access the shale bed.
The well operation would not be seen or heard from the municipal complex, and the land surface would not be damaged or disturbed, Mr. Temple said.
"There's no subsidence issues like there would be with mining," he added.
First Published August 5, 2010 6:17 am
