Laurel Highlands Conservation Landscape Initiative

This is the latest newsletter from the Conservation Landscape Initiative, established about 2010 by PA DCNR to help small communities in the planning of conservation efforts in their area. As we are are striving to keep our natural resources intact and improve the area in the Laurel Highlands we thought this would be good information. Newsletter talks about effects of natural gas drilling, Stoney Creek, and more.

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Conservation Coalition FOCUS ON WATER

Tomorrow is the deadline for registration to the Laurel Highlands Conservations Coalition’s April 23 conference with an emphasis on the declining water supplies from the perspective of an international scientist and local conservationists. Dr. Leonard Konikow of the U.S. Geological Survey is the keynote speaker. The afternoon will provide other topics including the efforts of the Marcellus Citizen Stewardship Project.

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Lisa Jackson, EPA Administrator on Fracking

Pennsylvania is certainly in the spotlight with our abundance of Marcellus Shale! NBC had this interview with Lisa Jackson, Administrtor of the Environmental Protection Agency. Our area has seen so much drilling that a new Marcellus Water Plant (turns the treated water into good water) has been under construction since June 2010 in Somerset, PA! This article from the Somerset Daily American shares that we could see even more!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Gas Leases Good, Bad, or Somewhere in Between

Jefferson Township Somerset County had three “Hydrocarbon Transfers” that were all more than 1.3 million dollars since June of this year. This township happens to be where Hidden Valley Resort is located along with Kooser State Park and Laurel Hill Creek, which was one of the 10 most endangered streams in the United States.

We’ve been trying hard to share information with our readers that allows us all to understand the pros and cons of this evolving business. Sunday evening CBS 60 Minutes aired the story below. Have you had an experience you would like to share?

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Hydrocarbon Deeds

Marcellus Shale, we first started bringing you information of these gas leases back in 2008! That’s when our State REALTOR Association (PAR) had Attorneys Lester Greevy and Dale Tice from Tioga County speak to our members. They specialize in these types of contracts. In June we saw our first “Hydrocarbon Deeds.” These two transfers were both filed in Jefferson Township (the Hidden Valley side of the mountain) and totaled over 3 MILLION DOLLARS!

Yes, the type of deed caught our eyes but the $1,638,127.49 and $1,371,041.49 transfer prices made us dig a little deeper!  Usually deeds for transfer of minerals are recorded WITH A $1.00 PRICE tied to them with NO transfer tax involved.  Here’s a copy of  one of Hydrocarbon Deeds if you’d like to take a peek!

Both transfers were from company to company.  In fact the Grantor on both transactions was BRC Minerals, LP from Texas and the buyers were; Oxy USA, Inc a Delaware corporation with a Texas address and BP Mineral Holdings II, LLC also a Texas company.  

Here are some questions and thoughts that came to us. Did they really pay for only a partial interest?  It appears that these transfers were for only 23-25% “undivided interest (on an eight-eights (8/8ths) basis)”. That just says to us they didn’t get the whole cow!

Where was the parcel? Of course we were thinking that it was one large farm. As the transfer was from and to out of state companies we were trying to figure out where the well would appear! After trying to read the deed and pulling up previous deeds we saw that there are MULTIPLE PROPERTIES INVOLVED!

The transfer tax was divided among 16 different school districts!  Even though it is Greek to us we’ll do our best to keep you updated with resources!

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