Natural Gas Royalty Payments Rise for Northeastern Landowners

Landowners across Susquehanna and Bradford counties are seeing their largest natural gas royalty payments in three years, as regional prices for Marcellus Shale gas climbed alongside stronger demand from new export terminals along the Gulf Coast.

Royalty tracking firms estimate the average landowner payment rose between 11 and 15 percent over the past two quarters, reversing a slump that began when regional gas prices fell below the cost many producers needed to justify new drilling.

"For a lot of families, this is the difference between the royalty being a nice bonus and it being something they actually budget around," said a Towanda-based land management consultant who advises several hundred mineral-rights owners.

Producers have responded cautiously, adding rigs in a handful of counties but stopping well short of the drilling pace seen a decade ago. Industry analysts caution that royalty income remains far more volatile than landowners' other income sources, tied closely to pipeline capacity and national gas demand rather than local conditions.

County assessors say the higher payments have modestly boosted local income tax collections in several rural school districts.