New documentary chronicles legal battles between W.Va. landowners and the frackers who own the gas beneath it - Entrepreneur Generations

A new documentary explores the impact of hydraulic fracturing on landowners. "Powerless: The High Cost of Cheap Gas", follows West Virginia landowners Beth Crowder and David Wentz, who went through a years-long legal battle with natural gas company EQT Corporation over hydraulic fracturing on their land, Mayeta Clark reports for ProPublica, in conjunction with the Charleston Gazette-Mail. The film is a product of ProPublica and CBS.

In June, the West Virginia Supreme Court ruled that oil and gas companies are trespassing if they enter private lands to use it for something the landowners didn't agree to. In the suit, Crowder and Wentz objected when EQT used the gas well site on their land to drill hydraulic fracturing wells to reach adjacent tracts of land where it also owned the mineral rights, Clark reports.

When the landowners, Beth Crowder and David Wentz, bought their property in 1975, they knew EQT Corp. owned the mineral rights beneath their lands, but they could not have imagined the fracking boom, and how disruptive the drilling technique would prove, Clark reports.

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2xKyPk0 New documentary chronicles legal battles between W.Va. landowners and the frackers who own the gas beneath it - Entrepreneur Generations

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