Small Oil Producers Oppose HB2177, SB807

news3Small oil producers from across Oklahoma are in a battle to protect their property, they declared in an email today. A copy was obtained by The McCarville Report.

At issue are the provisions of two bills.

“There are no provisions in HB 2177 or SB 807 that protect the small producers across Oklahoma from having their oil and gas reserves stolen,” said one statement.

“Drilling horizontal wells in zones in which we have vertical wells is simply stealing our oil. It is like sticking a straw in someone’s pond and sucking out their reserves.

“It is being said that 600 foot setbacks are good enough.  We have examples of horizontal wells drilled in zones in which there are producing vertical wells that are as much as 1320 feet away that are being fracked into and negatively affected.

“The Corporation Commission is where these issues are supposed to be sorted out. This isn’t being done now and if this bill passes it gives large, horizontal drillers twice as much acreage, which causes twice the problems for small producers.

“The government should not be in the business of legislating a taking of property by one company from another.

“Small producers from across Oklahoma have offered an amendment to protect the taking of someone else’s assets without a super majority agreement. We are proposing that 63% of the working interest owners must be in agreement before the horizontal drilling could occur. While this still amounts to a taking, there is at least a precedent for this language in any proposed water flood project. We have been told that this amendment would stop exploration; however, this is not true. Exploring is going where no one has been before, not taking what someone else has already discovered  and claiming ownership.

“Without this 63% compromise provision, we are asking you to vote NO,” they wrote legislators.

Longtime oilman Mike Cantrell of Ada said, “Tomorrow 40-50 small to medium producers will march on the Capitol for the second time in as many weeks in protest of a Leadership bill (both Bingman and Hickman are the authors) being rammed thru to allow big horizontal drillers to run over us in an exponential fashion(hell, they do now 640 acres at a time). Looks as if Oklahoma’s Republican legislature is following the Pelosi form of government- ‘we have to pass a bill in order to know what’s in it.’

“In Oklahoma we are the only state that has forced pooling laws where companies use the power of the state thru the OCC to force mineral owner and oil and gas property owners to let them drill into private property. The only restriction,until now , is that they can only do it on 640 acres or less.

“A few years ago they passed the ‘Shale development Act’ that let them extend this practice into multiple sections as long as they were doing it in a shale.  Of course they have used the power of the  OCC to call almost everything a shale. In other words they play games at the OCC and basically get about whatever they want ; they always do unless someone protest. I am quite sure that over 90% of the planitffs actions get approved at the OCC. The big companies have lawyers there that only practice  there . They are there every day and almost always get their clients what they want.

“Now the big companies, using horizontal drilling, are trying to expand the shale development act to all formations; even the ones we are producing with vertical wells. All we are asking for with our 63% amendment is that at least 63% of the owners in a unit that they propose a horizontal well through (only a zone we are currently producing) approve before they can move forward with their well through our reservoir. Seems fair. They want and are getting a better deal than fair. In ANY other state they would have to get agreement or make a deal with 100% of the owners before drilling into their property.

“It is a classic case of big business running over small business just because they can. Now mind you they don’t bully us like this in any other state but Oklahoma.”


Print pagePDF pageEmail page

*

Copyright © The McCarville Report