NORWICH – Natural gas exploration activity in Chenango County has prompted economic developers and planners to hit the books, so to speak, for any and all information they can quickly glean.
A meeting of the Chenango County Planning Board Tuesday brought officials representing several towns together with a professional forestry and natural resources consultant and Town of Smyrna Supervisor James B. Bays, who has been calling on the Chenango County Board of Supervisors for two years to be prepared for the gas activity here.
A meeting tonight at the Unadilla Valley High School in New Berlin is expected to bring together landowners who have an interest in leasing their property to natural gas companies as part of a coalition - in hopes of getting more lucrative contracts.
Chenango County Economic Development Director Maureen Carpenter, who met with representatives from Nornew, Inc. last week, said she is “trying to get a grasp on what this project really means for residents and the business community as a whole.”
During the meeting, the Commerce Chenango president and executive officer of the Industrial Development Corporation said she learned more about the economic development potential with the new industry’s presence here, but no action has been taken on the part of the county.
Carpenter said she would be reaching out to businesses and industrial parks to see if the energy source would benefit them. She would not say, however, whether she knew where the actual natural gas pipelines were being laid out for Chenango County.
Nornew, Inc., an international gas exploration company that has local offices in Norwich, has not returned calls to The Evening Sun. The company is one of several which have approached the region’s landowners to lease, and even to purchase their land for exploration and possibly, drilling.
“They expressed an interest to tell their side of the story,” Carpenter said about Nornew. “They want people to know who they are and what their business is all about.” Carpenter said company officials told her they had spent more than $1 million dollars with local contractors since November 2007.
She said she hoped to plan a public forum for Nornew sometime next month.
At the Planning Board meeting, Jeff Denkenberger, regional office manager for Forecon, said he hadn’t received a lot of calls from landowners in Chenango County regarding gas leasing, but is working on leases for several clients in other counties. Forecon has been serving the needs of private and public landowners in New York since the 1950s.
“We are really out there to protect the landowners’ rights and make sure they are compensated for timber, negotiate road layout sizes and well locations,” he said.
Planning Department Director Donna M. Jones said she worried that people haven’t been “thinking about all of the details.”
“I’m afraid that the residents of the county are going to be taken advantage of,” she said. “Residents need to have someone they can call who has experience with this. They need to protect themselves. When people call our office and ask for advice, we always suggest they find an attorney.
Fourteen of 16 pages in the recent edition of the Chenango County Farm Bureau’s newsletter were about leasing. While the Farm Bureau doesn’t endorse any particular legal firms to its members, those who call can acquire a referral list of lawyers, names of individuals forming coalitions and links to Internet information on the natural gas industry.