Sell Mineral Rights in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale is the most-litigated gas play in the country over how post-production costs get deducted from royalty checks, and that history shapes almost every conversation we have with an owner here.

If you own Marcellus gas rights in Pennsylvania, chances are your royalty statements show deductions for gathering, compression, dehydration, and transportation that reduce your check well below the wellhead price you might expect from your stated royalty fraction. Whether those deductions are lawful depends heavily on the exact language in the original lease, and that language varies enormously across leases signed during the 2008 through 2012 boom versus more recent agreements.

We read the lease before we price a Pennsylvania position, going beyond the current royalty statement, because a lease with a genuine net-back clause and one with ambiguous post-production language can produce very different realistic cash flow projections even at identical gross production. That distinction matters more here than almost anywhere else we operate, and it's the detail an offer built purely off a recent check tends to miss entirely.

Post-production deductions and what they mean for value

Pennsylvania case law has gone back and forth on whether operators can deduct post-production costs when a lease is silent on the question, and owners with older leases from the early Marcellus boom frequently signed agreements drafted before this issue was well understood by either side. If your check has shrunk relative to what nearby wells' gross production would suggest, the deductions are usually the reason, and we build that reality into our underwriting rather than pricing off a headline royalty rate that doesn't reflect what actually lands in an owner's account.

For owners who suspect their deductions may not match their lease terms, this is squarely a matter for a landman or attorney familiar with Pennsylvania royalty litigation, and we say so directly rather than offering an opinion on a legal question outside our role.

Dry gas pricing and Appalachian basis differentials

Marcellus gas historically sold at a discount to Henry Hub because Appalachian takeaway capacity lagged production growth, though new pipeline infrastructure has narrowed that basis differential in many areas over the past several years. We look at which specific pipeline or gathering system a well connects to, since basis exposure still varies meaningfully by county and can affect the realistic cash flow an owner should expect going forward.

Northeast versus southwest Pennsylvania: two different plays

The dry-gas northeast counties around Susquehanna and Bradford behave differently from the wetter, liquids-rich southwest around Washington and Greene County, where natural gas liquids add a revenue stream oil-focused buyers sometimes overlook. An owner in the southwest with an NGL-heavy lease is holding a somewhat different economic asset than a dry-gas northeast owner, even if both are technically Marcellus, and we underwrite the two differently.

Older leases, held-by-production status, and estate transfers

Many Pennsylvania Marcellus leases are now well over a decade old, and a meaningful share of the underlying mineral ownership has passed through at least one estate transfer since signing. Confirming that the recorded chain matches who is actually entitled to the royalty, particularly where a will or intestate succession wasn't formally recorded against the mineral interest, is a routine part of our diligence rather than an obstacle we push back onto the owner.