Natural Gas Knowledge

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1

So I’m slowly moving forward with a potential rental / property purchase. I seem to have everything accounted for except one thing. Natural gas rights / storage.

The current owner (who lives out of state) has told me he has a gas storage well on the property, which is linked to a station via a small tract of land behind my current house, to the National Fuel substation next door to me. My questions are varied and connected and I’ll try to keep them straight.

Gas Rights:

  1. He’s told me he gets a certain amount of free gas as part of his agreement, and a minuscule royalty check. This goes to / with the home he’s looking to sell.
    A. Can these rights potentially be transferred to my home once the sale goes through? I would gain 17 acres adjacent to my property then totaling about 22 acres.
    B. I assume the amount of gas provided is limited. Who sets this limit and how do I find out what it is?

Storage Well:

  1. The well is on the other side of the property I’m looking to purchase. If you look at the pic below, I’m on the right, the potential house is to the left of me, and the clearing represents the well head for the storage.
  2. There seems to be enough road frontage to either chop off a chunk of land for a building lot, or I could build a spec house on that spot. Anyone know how far away I have to be from the actual well site for a building?

If anyone has any info, or knows who I should contact, it would be VERY helpful.

https://earth.google.com/web/@42.6868748,-78.9624462,232.46400196a,366.82896787d,35y,85.90659434h,34.9999966t,-0r/data=ClUaUxJNCiUweDg5ZDMxZWYwOWUxNjk2MTk6MHhhMjA2MDNjMjc3OWMzYjA1GfcVtUXjV0VAIdDVsaWivVPAKhI3MzUzIFZlcnNhaWxsZXMgUmQYAiAB

2

I’d speak with an attorney for sure.

I looked through a few natural gas related threads because I thought I remembered there was someone here who worked for a gas company, but I can’t remember who.

3

I’m going to involve my attorney but I don’t know his knowledge base on an issue like this. I’ll see.

4

I would start by contacting National Fuel, I would assume this would be the same sort of situation that someone with solar panels would have when they sell back to the grid during off hours and what not. This is actually very interesting because we have friends that live on Versailles as well but I have never heard of this.

5

I was going to contact them, then hesitated for two reasons:

  1. I figured I’d get the corporate run around.
  2. They are not a “neutral party” and I’d have a hard time trusting anything they tell me.
6

A friend of mine used to live in Strykersville. Father was his next door neighbor and had Natural gas wells on his property. He paid to have his son’s house connected to those wells. When my friend sold the house, the father cut off the supply of natural gas to the sold home.

I am sure this will work out in the end in your favor after the paper work, paying money, etc.