To the Editor:

Last week I attended a really good workshop in Swain County on landowner rights that was sponsored by the N.C. State Cooperative Extension and the Rural Advancement Foundation International, USA. Even though I intellectually understood that recent bills and regulations passed by the General Assembly governing the exploration and production of oil and gas using hydraulic fracturing favored the oil a gas companies, it really hit home during the workshop.

It is your decision as to whether you want to lease your oil and gas rights, but either way no one is going to protect your rights, or get you the best deal except you. You need to know how to do a survey to see if you even own your subsurface rights. You need to know what to do if a landman approaches you, how to check his background, how to negotiate a contract. If you don’t want to lease your subsurface oil and gas rights, or don’t own them but get forced into a drilling unit through forced pooling, you need to again know your rights to make agreements to protect what happens on the land surface you do own. 

These are all things you can learn in the workshop. Other industries might contact you for your mineral rights or sand and gravel rights. How would you react? There have been mines in times past in our area. 

Due to another new law, anyone selling a home or land has to sign a mineral and oil and gas rights mandatory disclosure statement before the purchaser makes their offer. A Realtor in the workshop said they don’t know how to advise people on filling it out, but the workshop speaker did. If you want a landowner rights workshop in Haywood County, contact the Cooperative Extension Service at 828.456.3575, or contact James Robinson of RAFI at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and tell them you want this workshop. You need to know your rights so you can protect them. No one in the federal or state government is going to protect them for you

Donna Dupree

Jackson County