Property Owners Angry Over Seismic Searches For Gas

In the Southern Tier of New York, property owners are speaking out over gas companies searching under their property for pockets of natural gas. The big question for them is who has the right to collect this information under private property.

The Southern Tier of New York - In the push to find new resources for natural gas, gas companies are hunting along rural roads, with high tech trucks which shoot seismic waves into the surrounding ground, to discover geologic secrets under homes, farms and fields. The purpose of this is to map where there are gas pockets in the Marcellus Shale Formation. Property owners feel that the gas companies are trespassing and that they have no right to use seismic waves to peek under their property. Gas companies feel they are within their rights. The manager of Fortuna Energy of Big Flats, NY, Mark Scheuerman cites a recent ruling from a Texas appeals court, where a company had been accused of subsurface trespass. The ruling, Garza vs. Coastal, involves claims that Coastal Gas had pulled mineral resources from a neighboring property beyond its designated lease area. The court cited the "law of capture" that applies in Texas. It essentially states that if you can get it, you can have it. There is no such ruling for the state of New York. Scheuerman said,

"My first read on this is seismic waves and data gathered from seismic waves is under the same category."

Hence, many towns and cities are in the process of drafting or proposing regulations which would require getting land owner's consent before seismic equipment could gather data. Dawson Geophysical Co. have pending permit applications to test in the towns of Conklin, Binghamton and Kirkwood. The Marcellus Shale Formation is a section of marine sedimentary rock found in eastern North America. This formation is found under most of the Appalachian Basin. This shale contains natural gas reserves that are still mostly untapped and makes for an attractive target for energy development.

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Bedrock geologic map showing Marcellus bedrock in New York and Pennsylvania

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For decades, seismic trucks have been gather data throughout the Southern Tier. Seismic trucks -- which are also known as thumper trucks -- use impact devices to send waves through the ground.

They operate with synchronized precision, bumper to bumper, advancing in groups of three or four to an uncharted stretch of land.

They stop as a unit and rev up their engines to power hydraulics that lift and lower their equipment to the ground. After sending waves pulsing through the earth and rebounding back to sensors, they lift their units and advance a few hundred feet up the road. There, they begin the process again.

Even now, the Marcellus Formation development is still in it's early phases, but is considered especially important because of the multi-billion-dollar decisions that will follow regarding drilling and leasing land. At this point, industry leaders are frustrated because of the possible regulations that might be imposed on them, claiming it's an impediment to the development of natural gas reserves in the area.

"You know, people have been screaming about energy prices, and how their mother can't heat her home," Brad Gill, a spokesman for the Independent Oil & Gas Association of New York said. "And we have this wonderful opportunity. The industry will simply have to move on to the next town or the next state without all these regulations and restrictions."

Landowner coalitions are growing and together plan on negotiating with gas companies. They are even going so far as handing seismic crews written warnings to leave the property or face legal action. Even though landowners claims have merit, the problem then arrives in that it's pushing possible business away from their areas. Chemung County Farm Bureau President Ashur Terwilliger tells landowners to 'go ahead and allow the testing to be done but with one important caveat' and that being that the landowners are told the location of the gas, which would solve a lot of the problems. Lindsay Wickham, a field adviser for the New York State Farm Bureau said,

"Landowners should be entitled to some compensation -- information or money."