One of the more under the radar bills going through our legislation has to do with mineral rights for land owners. after compromises made by the oil and gas industry, the bill received the endorsement of the West Virginia Farm Bureau.

 

The bill's purpose is to try and make it easier for the oil and gas companies and mineral rights owners to come to an agreement in areas of land where companies want to horizontally drill. But that can often be held up by a minority ownership amongst the pool of mineral rights owners who don't want to allow drilling over large areas of land.

"If 8 land owners wanted to lease and there was one in the middle that only owned ten acres... it could cause them all a lot of trouble in terms of how to set up this pool," said Stephen Butler with the West Virginia Farm Bureau. 

 

The Farm Bureau told 5 News that some of their members were still worried, but that they felt the bill was a nice compromise.