NATURAL RESOURCES
AND ENVIRONMENT
70. GENERAL POLICY ON OIL & GAS
West Virginia Farm Bureau recognizes the
importance of the oil and natural gas industry
to the State of West Virginia and supports the
responsible development of this industry, provided
adequate protection is afforded to the state’s
agricultural and other natural resources. Farm
Bureau recognizes the importance of private
property rights in our society and supports the
rights of land and mineral owners to negotiate
freely with other parties, but recognizes that
certain proposals for unitization for oil and gas
extraction may create opportunities for Farm
Bureau members which outweigh any objections to
the process.
Farm Bureau believes that land use decisions
should be made only after consideration of the
impacts of any land use decision on the entire
property, and that severance of the surface and
subsurface estates is not only ill-advised as a matter
of agricultural policy, but unduly burdensome
to the eventual owners of each estate, and to our
government for record keeping. Farm Bureau
supports proposals that bring about the reunification
of the surface and subsurface estate in all
circumstances where the owner of a subsurface estate
is missing, unidentifiable, unaccounted for, or fails to
pay the mineral taxes.
Moreover, Farm Bureau believes that proceeds
from extractive industries should accrue to the benefit
of those who own and harvest those resources,
and those from whose lands these resources are
extracted. Farm Bureau supports proposals that
direct the payments due an unidentifiable, missing,
20 West Virginia Farm Bureau News
or unaccounted for mineral owner under an existing
lease agreement to the owner of the surface estate
rather than to the State of West Virginia, and the
eventual reunification of the mineral estate with
the surface estate in cases where the owner of
the mineral estate is unidentifiable or cannot be
found. In circumstances where any portion of the
subsurface estate is sold by a governmental entity for
nonpayment of taxes, the owner of the surface estate
should be given a right of first refusal to purchase that
portion offered for sale.
Farm Bureau is concerned about the removal of
surface acreage from agricultural (cropland, pasture,
hay and forestry) production to accommodate the
needed infrastructure for oil and gas extraction. Farm
Bureau believes that conservation of West Virginia’s
farmland is essential to meet the growing demands
for food and fiber production in America. Moreover,
we support proposals that ensure landowners are
adequately compensated for damages caused by the
extraction of subsurface resources both in the short
and long terms. We also support proposals requiring
equal agriculture representation on the West Virginia
Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
71. TAXATION OF OIL AND NATURAL
GAS AND THE CONSTITUENTS
THEREOF AND OTHER MARKETABLE
SUBSTANCES
Farm Bureau believes in the fair apportionment
of taxes and supports the farm use valuation for
agricultural land as a means to encourage land to
stay in agriculture production. We support proposals
which ensure a landowner’s tax burden is not
increased by the location of oil or gas extraction
or processing point. Severance taxes should be
calculated based on the wellhead production of oil,
gas and natural gas and the constituents thereof and
other marketable substances and valued at the point
of an arm’s length sale.
As for the oil and gas industry, we share the
belief that natural resource extraction can be an
important part of West Virginia’s economy for the
foreseeable future, but we expect the tax burden
associated with harvesting these resources to be
borne by the industry, not by West Virginia farmers
(surface owners).