Kitching writes from Drayton Valley, Alta.
As a landowner with practical experience negotiating many surface leases over the past 17 years, I would like to clear up any misconceptions created by Mr. Lowell Haynes, who is obviously working as a land agent for the oil companies (WP, May 10.)
I felt a great need to inform other farmers and landowners that everything is not a rosy picture in the area of surface rights negotiations as Haynes makes it out to be.
Haynes’ statistics would mislead you to think that when only half a percent of all oil and gas applications go to an Alberta Energy and Utility Board hearing, that it is a small number.
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He failed to mention that at some of these hearings there are more than 200 residents opposed to some projects, and even more near Calgary. He also failed to include the number of landowners who are forced to fight oil companies with deep pockets at the Surface Rights Board or the Court of Queen’s Bench like I had to.
What about the number of farmers who are cash strapped or simply do not know how to negotiate a proper settlement and accept the company’s first low-ball offer?
There are many situations in my area that give land agents a bad reputation. There is one farmer who the oil company has refused to give a rental increase on wells on his property since the 1980s while they enter his land, business as usual.
Another is threatened that if he doesn’t sign and say it’s OK for the oilfield company to use more of his land, they will simply go to the Surface Rights Board and get a right of entry.
A land agent blatantly lied to my neighbours when he declared that nobody gets more than $2,000 per year for adverse effects related to oil company activity, when I had just negotiated with the same company up to $2,550 per year for adverse effects on wells on my property.
Let’s get one thing straight: land agents employed by an oil company do not have your best interests at heart.
They are there to facilitate taking over part of your property to enable an oil company a seamless transition to increased profit. It is a land agent’s job to mislead you.
Whether it happens at your kitchen table or a Surface Rights Board hearing, make no mistake, they are there to look after the oilfield company’s best interests, not yours.
Haynes also talks about a misconception that land agents are going around stealing farmers’ land, which he denies.
What would you like to call it when they offer $1,500 per acre for farmland in my area when others are subdividing their property and achieving an average of $14,000 per acre?
The result is that farmers are getting wise to the tactics employed by land agents and fewer are letting oil companies develop on their properties without a fight.
What we are dealing with on land compensation issues is the loss of rights taken from the landowner.
The land may be zoned as agricultural but its highest and best approved use is country residential, because all you need is a building permit, not a rezoning, to build a house on any agricultural quarter section.
A land agent working for the oil company probably would not inform you of this.
Thanks to the media coverage of Ray Strom’s court battle (WP, April 12) we might see a review of the way land agents are licensed so that farmer’s interests are better represented. I would also like to point out that the Surface Rights Act needs an upgrade as well.
At the provincial convention for the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties on March 21, it was voted on and passed unanimously to support 21 recommendations to reform the Surface Rights Act to better address the rights of farmers and landowners in Alberta.
Among these recommendations is that all landowners be compensated for pipelines on an annual rental basis. The oilfield company makes money on that pipeline every day but the landowner is restricted to what he can do due to setbacks.
Another recommendation is that Surface Rights Board members’ positions have limited terms and that board members’ backgrounds be available to the public.
I find it quite shocking to see the lack of surface rights experience by many of the new board members and these are the people making the decisions about what happens on our farms.
Yet another recommendation is that the pattern-of-dealing principle shall not be used in determining compensation. Land agents have hidden behind this fundamentally flawed principle for many years to deny any rental increase to many farmers.
The AAMD&C also agrees that the act should be amended to include the impact of inflation when determining rental compensation, which is something most of us have been asking land agents about for a long time and have been denied as they hid behind an antiquated act.
Some of these items will no doubt hurt the bottom line of many oil companies but they have been hurting our rights and net worth for many years.
Get a copy of this report from your county councillor, talk with your friends and talk with your MLA and tell him how important these reforms are. All our municipal government representatives are behind the recommendations and lobbying the government for these reforms as well.
Together we can make a difference and things are starting to change.
