Provides for the lapse of oil and gas interests located within Allegany state park if unused for 20 years prior to effective date of act

1 Co-sponsor

• José M. Serrano

BILL NUMBER:S2779 REVISED 06/07/11

Title of bill

An act to amend the real property law, in relation to lapse of oil and gas interests in Allegany state park

Summary of specific provisions

Amends the Real Property Law by adding a new section 329-a to provide that oil and gas interests in Allegany State Park unused for 20 years will lapse and revert to New York State unless a statement of claim is filed in accordance with subdivision five of this section. Failure to file a statement of claim will not result in lapse of such oil and gas interest if a diligent effort to preserve such interest were made with the period provided in subdivision five; or there was a failure to provide a statement of claim through inadvertence, or if no such notice was published within sixty days after receiving actual knowledge that such oil and gas interest had been extinguished.

Justification

Allegany State Park is home to 67,000 acres of outdoor recreational opportunities for residents in Rochester and Buffalo and the surrounding regions of the Niagara Frontier, Genesee Valley and Finger Lakes: The park is an invaluable asset to the state's tourism economy. It offers a hundred-year-old mixed hardwood forest, a 350-year-old old-growth-forest and one of the most botanically diverse ecosystems in New York State. Its incomparable beauty and unique ecological resources deserve a level of protection at least equal too if not greater than that afforded other New York State Parks. Oil and gas exploration in the Park would create a tangle of roads and well heads that would ruin its forests and render this amazing place unfit as a Park.

This bill will allow greater protection for Allegany State Park with regard to the lapse of oil and gas interest on land underneath the park. This bill allows ownership of mineral rights underlying Allegany State Park to revert to the state of NY if those rights are unused over a twenty year span. Ownership of these rights are often extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine.

A new concern exists with the potential of natural gas exploration in the Marcellus Shale formation that lies beneath much of Allegany State Park. A drilling practice called hydraulic fracturing or "hydrofracking" is necessary to extract natural gas from the 1-3 mile deep Marcellus Shale: This process requires unprecedented 5 acre wellheads and unprecedented volumes of water (2-9 million gallons).

Such activities could cause disruption to the vegetation and wildlife of Allegany State Park. Any new oil or gas exploration in Allegany State Park would be contrary to the recreational and ecological value of the park.

The bill's intent is to inventory the dormant oil and gas rights in Allegany State Park and to have those rights revert back to the state if unused. The bill will limit the disruption of Allegany State

Park's recreational and ecological systems which could be threatened by the exploitation of those privately held rights.

Prior legislative history

1998: A.289A - Referred to Judiciary 2000: A.2436 - Reported and Referred to Ways and Means 2001-02: A.2212 - Reported and Referred to Ways and Means 2003-04: A.625 - Referred to Judiciary 2005-06: A.2569 - Referred to Judiciary, Passed Assembly, Delivered to Senate 2009-10: S.7170B - Third Reading Calendar in Senate, A.9070B - Passed Assembly

Fiscal implications

New York State would incur a nominal expense in complying with this bill.

Effective date

Immediately.