This week I saw a story out of New York State, where officials are in the process of debating whether to allow hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas in some areas whether thousands of acres have already been leased by the big gas companies. It turns out that thousands of property owners in upstate New York had leased their mineral rights to one of the nation's biggest gas companies, Chesapeake Energy, at rock-bottom prices a number of years ago. When state officials imposed a halt on drilling in 2008, the company unilaterally decided to freeze the leases and push back the expiration date. Meanwhile, the fracking boom in Marcellus Shale country had caused a steep rise in prices for new leases -- meaning that farmers and other landowners locked in at the old rate had been robbed of hundreds of thousands in dollars in additional income. The only way for these property owners to get any recourse was in the legal system. Finally, with help in this instance from the New York attorney general's office, some 4,400 landowners won a settlement that will allow them to renegotiate their deal with Chesapeake, the gas giant. With all the well-deserved publicity ...
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