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Thursday, July 11, 2019

New documentary chronicles legal battle between W.Va. landowners and owner of mineral rights on their land

A new documentary explores the impact of hydraulic fracturing on landowners. "Powerless: The High Cost of Cheap Gas" follows Beth Crowder and David Wentz of West Virginia, who battled in courts for years with natural-gas company EQT Corp. over fracking 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. EQT used the well site on their land to drill fracking wells to reach adjacent tracts where it also owned the mineral rights.

When Crowder and Wentz bought their land in 1975, they knew EQT owned the mineral rights, but they could not have imagined fracking, which involves much above-ground equipment and facilities, and how disruptive the drilling technique would prove, they alleged. Eventually, they prevailed.

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