We’re going through the list of proposed bills this year and finding the ones that mineral and royalty owners should be interested in.

First up, Pat McGeehan is doing his usual good work to protect mineral and royalty owners’ rights by proposing a bill that would do away with forced pooling for deep rights in West Virginia.  A lot of people think we don’t have forced pooling in West Virginia, but we do.  Anything below the Marcellus can be force pooled.  HB 2131 would remove force pooling from deep formations.  Prediction: this one doesn’t get passed, sadly.

A similar bill has been proposed by a group of Delegates.  HB 2158 would make it necessary to get the approval of all the owners in the unit before the unit could be effective.  Prediction: this one doesn’t get passed, sadly.

Here’s a great one.  HB 2170 would require a setback of 1500 feet between the limit of disturbance of a well site to an occupied dwelling structure.  Whew!  Right now the setback is 625 feet from the center of the well pad.  The current setback is definitely not enough.  HB 2170 also does some other good things, including providing notice of development to the occupant of any residence on the tract, and creating air, noise, light, and dust standards.  It would also create an obligation by the oil and gas developer to pay the surface owner for the change in value from it’s highest and best use, not the actual current use.  Boy, would that help some people I know.  Prediction: this one doesn’t get passed.

The West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association is going to push for forced pooling again, just from a different angle.  They are calling their two proposals “co-tenancy” and “joint development”.  I haven’t found the bills on the Legislature’s web site yet, so they must not have entered them yet.  I’ll keep an eye out for them.