Landowners, drillers debate split estates

With methane wells in her corner of the world, rancher Jessie Huffman spends considerable time worrying about what her gas-drilling neighbors are up to. She worries about springs drying up or water turning bad as gas rigs plumb mineral rights leased from the government. In the West, the federal government has made a practice of leasing its mineral rights to oil and gas companies without personally notifying surface landowners first. Such properties wherein the surface land is privately owned, but someone else or the federal government owns the rights to underlying minerals, are known as split estates. Surface owners are compensated when companies extract the minerals, but conflicts do occur, often starting with notification. "The landowner hasn't even been notified when a parcel under their property comes under lease," said Huffman, who ranches near Kirby in remote southeast Montana. "There definitely should be notice to the landowner when their property comes under lease." Now with more liberal-leaning energy policies on the table in Congress, Huffman and others are asking for advance notice and then some. She and other Montanans are in Washington, D.C., this week asking for better notice, mediation and even compensation whenever the government allows gas drilling beneath their land. They say socially and politically, the country's mood is right for tipping the scales in favor of surface landowners in oil and gas debates...BillingsGazette