CABOT FILES SUIT TO DRILL 36 WELLS ON STATE PARK LAND

(01/21/2008)

By Bob Weaver Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation has challenged a decision by the Manchin administration that has denied the company's plan to drill three dozen new natural gas wells inside Chief Logan State Park. Chief Logan is the state's busiest state park. Lawyers for Cabot, seeking an overturn, filed the suit in Logan Circuit Court. The nine-page petition claims the Department of Environmental Protection misapplied a state law that generally prohibits "extraction of minerals ... under any state park." Cabot attorney Timothy M. Miller says the decision, "To apply it otherwise would deprive the mineral owners of their private property rights." Miller also argues the law gives the state Division of Natural Resources — not the DEP Office of Oil and Gas — authority to block drilling for publicly owned minerals at parks. Cabot holds lease agreements for gas under the 3,600-acre park, reportedly retained when the land was given to the state for a park. The State of West Virginia may not have taken precautions regarding the extraction of minerals under the park when it received title.

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