Property Owner Loses Land to Gas Driller on ‘Split Estate’
One of three Marcellus wells on David Barndt's property. (background: David Barndt, David's father, Joshua B. Pribanic) photo: Melissa Troutman
Pennsylvania property owner David Barndt hopes to receive some answers soon regarding Triana Energy Corporation’s current Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling operations on his land, against his wishes.
Barndt resides in Richlandtown, Pennsylvania but owns 150 acres of family land in Hebron Township, Pennsylvania, five hours northwest from his home. He does not own his mineral rights, which were severed from the land in Hebron before his grandfather purchased it about 50 years ago. Triana Energy, LLC, a natural gas company from Charleston, West Virginia, leased the minerals under Barndt’s land in 2010. Now, even though Barndt has never signed anything or come to any agreement with Triana, over a dozen acres of his forest land has been cut, cleared, and drilled without his consent.
According to Barndt, Triana sent him permits issued by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to drill on his property in Hebron Township last September. Two weeks later, another letter arrived asking him to sign and return. However, living 250 miles away from his Hebron property, having never talked to anyone in person, and nowhere near ready to sign anything without knowing more, Barndt did not sign and return the letter.
Then, the last week of October, he was contacted for the first time by phone and spoke with Triana Land Manager Mark Moyer.
“[Mark] wanted to meet up in Hebron, which I did,” Barndt said. “All he wanted me to do was sign a surface agreement and write in whatever dollar amount I wanted. I could have written in ‘three million’ but they don’t have to approve that amount. But they would have had my signature, so it wouldn’t have mattered what I wrote.”
According to Barndt, Moyer had no solid answers to any of his questions, telling Barndt that he was new to the job. Uncertain, Barndt returned to Richlandtown without signing anything.
While Barndt was out-of-state in late November, Moyer called Barndt to notify him that Triana was having some timber cut on the property two days later. Barndt was outside of cell service range and couldn’t discuss the matter with Moyer at that time. Once home several days later, Barndt found out that nine acres of timber on his property was cleared. Only after the trees were cut and being hauled away was he offered $1,000 for the timber by the excavation company Fox & Sons.
“The whole community knows there are hardwoods on that land,” Barndt said. “I don’t trust the numbers one bit.”
He declined the $1000 and still has not received any other offer.
Barndt then hunted down a lawyer who dealt with mineral rights issues in “split estate” cases such as his. The lawyer he hired contacted Triana requesting a look at the company’s title search, which would show details about the mineral deed for under Barndt’s property. According to Barndt, Triana refused to show the title search results and Barndt’s lawyer advised him to conduct his own title search.
The only paper regarding the mineral deed Barndt has ever received from Triana is an addendum to a title for mineral rights, which does not give specific enough information. Meanwhile, Triana continued with their well site development on Barndt’s land.
“I was just the afterthought of this whole thing,” Brandt stated. “At the [community] meeting [in February] they told everyone they’d been planning this for a year, so why didn’t they come to me last February? Why did they only give me six weeks between the time they first contacted me and when they started work?
“It’s a crooked way of doing things. They’re not up-front. They stole my timber.”
Barndt also stated that if the company showed him the mineral rights title search he would have been willing work with them. Instead, the company has stopped returning his phone calls since his lawyer became involved.
Other Hebron residents expressed concerns at a community meeting with Triana in February over the increase in truck traffic and reckless driving on the part of some truck drivers. Drilling and hydraulically fracturing a Marcellus Shale well requires hundreds of truck trips. One Hebron resident complained about almost being run off the road near an intersection by one truck that didn’t bother to heed a stop sign.
Residents complained of trucks driving too fast on the narrow, winding roads. “We are a farming community,” one woman said, adding that children and animals could be in the road and unseen by a truck driving too fast around a corner until it was too late.
Residents also expressed concerns about road degradation, which Triana said the company would fix.
“Yes, but meanwhile, those that live on these roads will have their suspension and tires ruined on their vehicles until work is done,” said Hebron resident John Pete.
Triana Energy Regulatory Affairs Director Rachelle King assured residents of Hebron that she understood their concerns. Senior Vice President James “Eddy” Grey explained that Triana gives contracted companies one warning about not operating to standards before firing any company that repeats offenses, including truckers.
Grey also stated at the meeting that Triana goes “above and beyond” and wants “to be good neighbors.” Grey told residents to contact King or Moyer if any other problems occurred.
Barndt, however, fears his problems won’t be going away anytime soon.
“I pay all the property taxes. The gas company doesn’t have to pay taxes on the minerals they take from this property. Yet their rights under the mineral lease trump my taxpaying surface-owner rights. That’s our legislators hard at work,” Brandt said.
Currently in Pennsylvania, natural gas companies do not have to pay a tax on the gas they extract. Newly-elected Governor Tom Corbett promised during his campaign for governor of Pennsylvania that he would impose no new taxes.
“Their attitude the whole time has been – so sue us,” said Barndt. “I’m fortunate that I can take Triana to court and still be okay. But what about people that can’t afford to? They’d be helpless against a company this big.”
Barndt and his lawyer were successful in fighting off an over 14-acre freshwater containment pond Triana had planned for his property earlier this year. Because the containment pond was not “essential” considering water can be pumped in via above-ground pipes that are later removed, Barndt was able to save the 30 acres Triana had taped off for constructing the pond on his property.
Questions regarding the companies plans and lack of agreement with Barndt were left unanswered by Triana’s Senior Vice President, who wrote in an email that “Triana does not believe it appropriate to discuss individual landowners in the media.”
Grey also wrote, “Typically, companies like Triana go out of their way to work with the surface owners to minimize surface disturbance…in a vast majority of cases, the producer of the minerals and the surface owner reach a mutually acceptable accommodation and the surface owner is compensated for damage to the surface.”
Since work began on his property last fall, Barndt has never been compensated.
Triana contacted Barndt in March to discuss two buildings the company plans to build on his property, one a metering station and the other Barndt’s still unsure of. Since he and his lawyer “drew a line in the sand” and “said no to the buildings, Triana has handed the matter off” to Tennessee Gas, a pipeline and distribution company operating in Potter County.
Last month, the Pennsylvania Utility Commission announced plans to grant public utility status to Laser Northeast Gathering, another pipeline company operating in the state, giving the company the power to condemn private property by eminent domain.
This, Barndt fears, means that Tennessee Gas will be able to do whatever it wills to his property if given the same public utility status.
Barndt isn’t sure if the buildings Triana and Tennessee Gas plan to build are essential to the extraction process, how many more of his acres they will consume, or whether the gas company has to contribute to the taxes on the buildings they put on his property.
Meanwhile, Barndt’s property loses value. He is unable to sell or subdivide. “Who would want to buy this?” Barndt said. “They’re going to be taking natural gas from here for 30 or more years, and I’ll still have to pay property taxes on land that is no longer mine.”
Calls to Potter County tax assessors, the Potter County Commissioners, and the Pennsylvania State Commissioners Association yielded no definite answers regarding the tax issues. Split estate cases such as Barndt’s stump officials due to a lack of such previous cases in Pennsylvania.
Triana has leased or owns rights to produce natural gas from approximately 26,000 acres in Potter County alone and controls about 130,000 gross acres of the Appalachian Basin in the northern tier of Pennsylvania.
A copy of this report appeared in the Potter Leader-Enterprise
Have a pitch about this investigation?
Related Posts:
One Response to “Property Owner Loses Land to Gas Driller on ‘Split Estate’”
Comments
Read below or add a comment...
Share Your Comment...
*Accepting cases in Pennsylvania and Ohio.Author(s)
Actually, split estates are very common in Pennsylvania, and I suspect that the reason Triana hasn’t been very cooperative here is that they know what their legal rights are, having been involved in situations like this before.
Oil and gas rights were taxed in Pennsylvania until 2001, when the Courts decided that prior taxation hadn’t been authorized, so owners (like Triana) have still paid more than they should have over the years, as the 100 years of taxes they did pay weren’t refunded when the taxation was found to be illegal.
That all being said, Triana has done a terrible job of landowner relations here, and appears to deserve the bad press they’re getting.