Binghamton Conklin Gas Lease Coalition

MARCH 2012 -

Hello all,
We are seeing a great upswing in interest in our Town of Binghamton / Town of Conklin coalition.  We were contacted last week by a gas company that would like to sit down with our negotiations team.  We also have had landmen from Exxon-Mobil knocking on doors in our coalition.  Please let us know who has been visited by them and please let us know which landman you met with.  We are doing our best to keep track of them but your help will allow us to keep a much needed eye on them.  This will give us the advantage in negotiations.  As we have seen in the past, when good things are about to happen the landmen are the first to arrive to pray in the week.  Now more than ever we need to be strong with a unified front.  It was 4 years ago this week that the first organized meeting was held at the Conklin Presbyterian church.  A lot has happened in those 4 years and we now have a solid lease ready for a gas company to sign, we have a legal team that is by far the best around and we have strength in numbers.  I cant tell you how impressed companies were with our coalition at the trade show in Texas.  They loved our contiguous acreage and the fact that we have already done much of their work for them by organizing everyone together.  After the NYS budget is pass this week we hope that the Governor will now move forward to allow us the opportunity to harvest our gas on our properties.  We are closer than ever.... don't give up now.

Please contact a steering team member with any questions.

JANUARY 2012 -

Dear Friends and Natural Gas Supporters,

Tonight I have some great news,  
In his State of the Union Address to congress and the nation earlier tonight the president asserted the role that Natural Gas, Shale Gas, will have in America. The president committed the administration to taking “every possible action to safely develop this energy.”

All politics aside, this is great news for us as united landowners! The JLCNY has issued the attached press release to underscore the importance of this moment. Please share this with all of your fellow supporters!

Thank you for your support, for your voices helped make this wonderful news possible! Keep it up, as I'm beginning to like sending you these positive posts!

Warmest Regards,
Dan Fitzsimmons, President
Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, Inc.

JANUARY 2012 -

Dear Friends and Natural Gas Supporters,

As you may recall from earlier emails, the biggest threat all NY landowners face right now is the Home Rule bill proposed by Senator Seward.

As part of the fight to secure your rights to use your land as you see fit and safely develop your natural gas, the JLCNY has sent the following letter Senator Seward. We then provided copies to Governor Cuomo and all NY legislators. It explains our position on Seward’s proposal and the reasons that we feel that it should be rejected with no further consideration.

January 17, 2012

The Honorable James L. Seward
41 South Main Street
Oneonta, NY 13820

Re: Home Rule and Natural Gas Development

Dear Senator Seward,

The Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, Inc. (JLCNY) is a nonprofit corporation whose mission is to foster, promote, advance and protect the common interest of the people as it pertains to natural gas development through education and best environmental practices. The JLCNY represents 38 independent landowner coalitions throughout New York whose members own over 800,000 acres of land over the Marcellus Shale natural gas deposits. We are especially active in Otsgeo, Cortland and Tompkins Counties with the Unatego Landowners Group, the Worcester Landowners Coalition, Central New York Landowner’s, County Line Landowners Coalition, Taylor Land Group and Tompkins Landowner Coalition. The JLCNY would like you to consider the following information related to oil and gas drilling and your Home Rule bill.  We hope you will realize how damaging your proposed legislation would be to New York and our landowner members.

In the 1970s, New York experienced many problems with the regulatory program for the oil and gas industry when municipalities began their own regulatory initiatives. This local regulation of the oil and gas industry resulted in several problems, including:

1. Safety concerns resulting from untrained local staff going onto well sites;
2. The significant costs to hire proper professional petroleum engineer staff, which was often too burdensome for local municipalities;
3. A patchwork of local regulation, which resulted in differing requirements for drilling unrelated to geology;
4. Financial security at both the local and State levels;
5. Conflicts between municipal boundaries and setbacks; and
6. Exorbitant local taxation.

In 1981, the New York Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Law was amended to include the following supersedure provision in ECL §23-0303(2):  “The provisions of this article shall supersede all local laws or ordinances relating to the regulation of the oil, gas and solution mining industries; but shall not supersede local government jurisdiction over local roads or the rights of local governments under the real property tax law.”  This amendment was enacted with the clear understanding that the supersedure clause extinguished the right of municipalities to regulate any aspect of oil and gas development including the right to zone oil and gas wells. There was never any intent to allow a local government to extinguish the mineral rights of any landowner by zoning out oil and gas development.  Rather, ECL §23-0303(2) was intended to strengthen the rights of landowners to recover their subsurface minerals, or have others do so for them, unfettered by any local regulation.

Furthermore, ECL Article 23-0301 declares it to be in the public interest to regulate the development, production and utilization of natural resources of oil and gas in this state in such a manner as will prevent waste, to authorize and to provide for the operation and development of oil and gas properties in such a manner that a greater ultimate recovery of oil and gas may be had, and that the correlative rights of all owners and the rights of all persons including landowners and the general public may be fully protected. Your legislation will allow municipalities to make decisions that conflict with the state’s public interest.

There are 2 cases pending in the New York State Supreme Courts, Cooperstown Holstein Corporation vs. Town of Middlefield and Anschutz Exploration Corporation vs. Town of Dryden and Town of Dryden Town Board. These cases will define the parameters of ECL §23-0303(2).  We believe strongly that NY courts will confirm that municipalities cannot regulate oil and gas and that a ban on oil and gas is the ultimate regulation.

Many municipalities in New York have been persuaded by those opposed to drilling to enact drilling bans.  Most of the local legislators supporting these bans have little or no knowledge about the oil and gas industry. The City of Binghamton recently enacted a ban. Not a single member of the Binghamton City Council has ever visited a well site. This is exactly the scenario that the 1981 legislation sought to avoid. Your bill threatens to return New York to the period of chaos that existed prior to 1981. This will unquestionably chill the oil and gas business in New York and prevent our state from realizing the benefits this industry will bring.  It will also frustrate the energy policy of the entire state.

Your legislation also threatens to shut down the existing oil and gas business in New York. Municipalities are enacting bans not just on high volume hydraulic fracturing but on all drilling. New York will lose opportunities associated with the development of shale gas and it will kill existing conventional drilling.  It will also expose municipalities to landowner claims for the taking of their rights to market their minerals.

How could an industry willing to invest billions of dollars do business in a state where we would allow local legislators, of varying levels of experience, to dictate whether or not drilling will occur on a 3-2 vote of a town board?  Town policies on drilling could conceivably change every election cycle. And, what will happen when one municipality says no to drilling and an adjoining municipality says yes?  The result will be a patch-work of areas where drilling may and may not occur - constantly changing.  Obviously this makes no sense.  That is why this decision should be left in the hands of the DEC.  The DEC will act in a manner consistent with our state environmental conservation laws and our energy policies while protecting our environment.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like any additional information on this topic.  Thank you for your consideration.

Respectfully,
Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, Inc.

Dan Fitzsimmons, President 

In addition we sent the attached article with the letter. It was written by Scott Kurkoski, the JLCNY’s attorney, and published in the New York State Bar Association Journal’s January 2012 issue. It is a well written and thorough summary of the landowner’s “Point of View”. It will be instrumental in educating those in Albany about our situation and having them recognize that developing our Natural Gas is in the best interests of you and all of NY.

As effective as we expect this information to be, some help from you will be even more productive.

Please take a moment to complete the “Take Action” linked to here.

It is fast, simple, and free. Best of all, completing it will convey your support for Natural Gas louder than anything else we do.

Finally I’d like to ask you to please share this information with your friends, family, and neighbors. The more that we all speak up now, the sooner we can put this debate to rest and get on with enjoying our land.

Warmest Regards,
Dan Fitzsimmons, President
Joint Landowners Coalition of NY

LINK TO: NYSBA January 2012.pdf (940 kB)

JANUARY 2012 -

Dear Friends and Landowners,

Wednesday, January 11, 2012, was a critical day for us.  Wednesday marked the day the NYS DEC finally closed the comment period on the SGEIS.  As landowners, we have been fighting for our rights to develop our minerals safely and responsibly for four years. If we can ramp up the fight in the weeks to come, we just might be looking at our watershed moment.  

We carried out some exciting plans this past week. We delivered to the DEC in Albany several thousand letters of support – signed individually by so many of you – to endorse our SGEIS comments.  And key JLCNY members shared highlights of those comments at press conferences around the state that day.  These comments are smart and highly technical. They are the culmination of an analysis and search for best practices that took hundreds if not thousands of hours on behalf of many of you who travel to well sites, meet with experts, and roll-up your sleeves and pull together the best information we can get.

As they say "we've come a long way baby." But we need your help more than ever if we are to win back our rights.  A week ago, we learned Long Island legislator, NY Assembly Environmental Conservation Committee Chair Robert Sweeney, will be the lead sponsor of a new bill to extend NY’s moratorium on hydraulic fracturing until June 2013. It is expected to be introduced into the Legislature shortly.

We cannot let down our efforts.  We have to stop these energy-using hypocrites from pulling the strings that run our lives into the ground.  How many of us know someone – even maybe ourselves – who have lost or soon will lose the land we cherish – due to jacked-up taxes and so few ways to make a living?  Or moved away to find work? While below our feet waits the key to prosperity and energy independence. 

Your Support
We need your financial support to make sure our voice is heard in Albany, to fund our critical education sessions, to continue to hold events, print signs, make phone calls, and find experts to get us the best information available – in short, to make sure we have a voice. 

A Look Back
How have we gotten through these four years? Because of you – your hard work, your faith, your never-give-up spirit. Most of all – your generous giving.  Thank you for helping us uphold our landowner rights by advancing natural gas exploration in our region to the extent we have.  Let’s face it:  we are not quitters.  We must be made of Teflon.  We know how to make our own decisions, fight for what’s right, and support each other.  Thank God for that. 

What We’re Up Against
Do you know opposition groups to natural gas development receive millions of dollars in funding from foundations, nonprofit organizations, even government grants?  I know because I have knocked at the doors of these foundations.  They told me hydraulic fracturing is the best thing that has happened to their bank accounts.  They have money pouring in that they dole out to defeat us. 

They spread misinformation, they use fear, and even employ extremist tactics to intimidate and sway individual opinions.  These groups who are making money by fighting us are hijacking our rights to drill on our own lands.  This is land some of us have been on for generations, paying our taxes and being responsible stewards of for decades.  They are stealing opportunities away from our children to stay in the area but can’t because there are no jobs and no economy.

As for those urbanite anti-gas folks who want to control our destiny?  They are doing better than ever economically.  In Manhattan, they had an 85 percent occupancy rates in their hotels this year, the best in years – all told a record 50 million visitors to NYC.  They don't feel the sting of the down economy like upstate landowners do – because they have always called the shots – and we have always taken an economic backseat.  But we have the biggest source of wealth the state has ever seen below our feet.  Maybe that potential power shift is bothering some of them?

If we want a future for our communities and our children and grandchildren, we have to take control of our own destiny with our own money, time and efforts.

I want to ask you a favor.  Will you put an envelope in your wallet or purse labeled "land owners rights fund" and the next time you go to buy a meal, go to a movie, buy a cup of coffee or basically purchase anything that is not a necessity, take that money (or even just a couple of bucks) and put it in your envelope, keep adding to it for a short while, and then send it to us to help us protect our rights?  Can you do this today?  If everyone donated $10 per month on a consistent basis, we could have the resources we need to WIN.

Remember this:  we are the landowners of upstate New York.  We have rights and we demand those rights be acknowledged.  We are determined to continue the fight until they are.  Can you help us today, and commit to sending what you can every month, to ensure we can fight for our rights, and win this struggle?  Thank you and God bless each and every one of you.  Happy New Year!

Most Sincerely,
Dan Fitzsimmons, President
Joint Landowners Coalition

PS:  click here to find the donate button on the left side of the JLCNY Homepage – having your support before Wednesday would be especially appreciated!

PPS:  If you prefer to send a check in the mail, please do it today! Any amount helps – if you can send $200 please do it.  If you can send $100, $50, $25, even $10, it all helps.  If you can send a few dollars a month I would appreciate it more than you know! Here’s our address:

Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, Inc.
PO Box 2839
Binghamton, NY 13902

OCTOBER 2011 -

Hello all,

First: Mark your calendar.  Our next group meeting will be Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at the SV high school auditorium.  The meeting starts at 7:00 PM, there will be information tables and we have some important papers for you to sign, so come early.

Our attorney, Scott Kurkoski; Esq, will be there to discuss:

·        The State of Oil and Gas in New York
·        Update on the Latest Version of the SGEIS
·        Landowners Proceed with Caution as NY Opens for Business
·        Why You Should Not Sell Your Minerals
·        How Our Communities Will Benefit
·        Challenges Ahead
We will also have William Lewis of Peoples National Bank to discuss the financial benefits Pennsylvania  landowners have experienced from natural gas development.  Bill will help us to understand what we can expect in New York.

·        Come and hear what your Pa. neighbors are actually receiving per acre in royalties.
·        BRING YOUR CALCULATOR
Second: Many of you have received a mailer from a companies called "Earth Money"  and "Griffith Land Services".  Their names sound very environmentally protective.... their brochure is nice.... they have pretty pictures.  They are nothing but glorified brokers and landmen hiding behind fancy names.  You have made it this far. Please don't get fooled at the finish line.  Our legal team will speak more about groups like them at the meeting.  Please attend to hear the latest on this and much more important info.

This meeting will be open to any current member and anyone who is new and would like to join.  It is in your best interest to make sure your neighbors are also members of the coalition, so If they are on the fence then this meeting will be of great importance to them.

It has been a long road for all of us, thanks for your support,

Your Steering Committee

SEPTEMBER 2011 -

Hello all,
We would like to issue our thoughts and prayers to all of you that have had flood related problems.  Please know that you are not alone.  For those of us who were not impacted by the flood, please reach out and help a neighbor in need.
Best of luck to all of you. 
The Steering Committee
The following is a message from our lawyer.

For more current information go to the website for the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York:

http://www.jlcny.org/site/index.php

Find JLNY on Facebook: Joint Landowner's Coalition of NY Inc.

Contact your Elected Representatives