On January 5, the West Virginia Mineral Owners Coalition held its first meeting of the year to discuss strategies for protecting landowners from harmful legislation in the 2017 legislative session.

Landowners from numerous counties across West Virginia were present.

In 2016, two West Virginia Supreme Court cases upheld mineral and landowner rights and the Coalition will lobby legislators in 2017 to maintain and continue those protections. In Mountain Valley Pipeline vs. McCurdy, the Supreme Court supported a lower court’s decision that pipeline companies cannot trespass onto your land, without your permission, to survey for interstate projects that have not yet been granted eminent domain.

In Leggett vs. EQT Production Company, the court held that the state’s minimum royalty payment of 12.5 percent must be paid without the deduction of post-production costs. This decision upheld statutory protections put in place to protect the interests of mineral owners who have leased their minerals. EQT has asked the court to rehear their case on this issue.

“We are trying to keep the industries in this state from stealing our property rights,” said Wayne Johnson, a mineral owner in Ritchie County. “Taking from our statutorily protected royalty payments is theft.”

“The point of our coalition is to support property owners in their ability to negotiate their own mineral rights and protect their land,” stated Basil Keaton, a mineral and landowner from Raleigh, WV. “These are basic principles of property ownership.”

Members of the West Virginia Mineral Owners Coalition will be actively lobbying against bills that negatively impact landowners and mineral owners in the 2017 legislative session. For more information contact Elise Keaton at 304-207-1150 or email wvmineralowners@gmail.com.