Pooling

Amassing Property for the Extraction of Natural Gas from the Marcellus Shale

LWPA recognizes that consolidating adjacent properties for drilling is a means to increase efficiency and minimize risk. At the same time, the League believes that individual rights now protected by the Constitution should not be weakened or abridged.

Therefore, LWVPA supports:

• the 2006 Pennsylvania Property Rights Protection Act (PRPA)* without amendment for the development of natural gas resources so as to restrict the use of eminent domain and safeguard citizens’ rights;

• minimum spacing requirements, based on technological limits, between unconventional drilling sites to limit the number of wells; and

• pooling of lands between corporate entities holding lands for the extraction of natural gas as a reasonable means to reduce environmental impacts without impacting individual property rights.

Pooling of lands held by individuals rather than corporate property owners is problematic. Used as a means to implement best practices for environmental management, policymakers should adopt specific criteria and clear qualifications as to how this goal will be accomplished. Any specific action should include, but not be limited to, safeguards to protect the rights of individual property owners, input from county conservations districts and other local stakeholders in the environmental decision-making process and precise data defining compliance with previous agreed to criteria and qualifications.

• In response to the Supreme Court decision, Kelo v. City of New London, Pennsylvania adopted the 2006 PRPA that includes the eminent domain code for the Commonwealth. The act prohibits the condemnation of privately-owned property by eminent domain for use by private enterprises (26 Pa. CS. Section 204 (a), except for certain limited exceptions that primarily pertain to blighted property (26 Pa. CS. Section 204(b)).

Adopted June, 2011