Company Limits Landowner's Rights
13th December 2011
Company Limits Landowner's Rights
In its rapid ascent to become a top leaseholder in the Marcellus Shale, Chesapeake Energy came to West Virginia and put into play a strategy designed to narrow landowner rights and expand company control over all phases of the drilling cycle.
The Oklahoma City-based energy giant absorbed the region -- which sits above the natural gas rock formation -- in just a few months, driving down landowners' bargaining power, and in some cases preventing leases from expiring, locking landowners into those contracts indefinitely.
Chesapeake Energy moved into Ohio County through a quiet 2010 land swap with Range Resources -- unknown even to the landowners whose property rights changed hands.
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