An 85,000 acre property owners alliance in Wayne and Susquehanna Counties has entered into a tentative agreement with global energy giant Hess Corp for natural gas exploration.
Two executive representatives of the Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance declined to comment on Thursday, citing ongoing private negotiations.
The alliance’s website, however, reported that the group’s executive committee agreed by majority vote on July 1 “to recommend the Hess lease and financial offer” and enter into a “Letter of Intent” with Hess Corp.
The alliance, formed in 2007, represents landowners that have joined forces to negotiate a land lease, essentially giving a natural gas company the right to explore and possibly extract natural gas.
These companies tend to lease contiguous pieces of land, thus making a landowners alliance more agreeable to their interests.
“In the end it came down to the value of the entire package,” according to a post on the alliance’s website. “Each property owner within the next few days will be given a copy of the final Hess lease for your review. Both the (alliance) and Hess want the process to move as quickly as possible.”
It appears the alliance solicited at least three offers before settling on this tentative agreement, according to other posts on the site.
If the deal is completely agreed to, more than 1,000 landowners could open up their properties to be potentially drilled for natural gas under the guidance Hess Corp., a major energy commodities producer.
It includes 70,000 acres in Northern Wayne County, generally north of Dyberry Township, and 15,000 acres in Susquehanna County.
The Hess Corp. deal would also represent a huge, second wave of leasing interest in Wayne County, after a heavy period of leasing activity last year by an assortment of natural gas companies. The county sits more than a mile above a geologic formation called the Marcellus Shale, a hotspot of natural gas locked away in its dense rock.
The post adds that a series of town hall meetings will soon be conducted between landowners and Hess Corp. representatives.
“It is safe to say that if the process moves along the way that both the (alliance) and Hess anticipates, it will take a couple of weeks and not months,” the post reads. “We want to give you time to see and read the lease, to have a Town Hall meeting with Hess ... and time to share the lease with your personal lawyer if you so desire.”
To date, there is only one active natural gas operation in the county, a well drilled by Chesapeake Appalachia, of West Virginia, that is ostensibly targeting the Oriskany formation.
A natural gas lease is a granted right from the landowner to an interested company to explore and drill a piece of property; it does not definitively mean drilling will occur.