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Assessing how energy companies negotiate with landowners when obtaining land for hydraulic fracturing

Nature Energy (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

To extract natural gas through hydraulic fracturing, energy companies often need to obtain consent from many different private landowners, whose properties lie atop the gas reservoir. Negotiations with these landowners have important economic, environmental and social implications. In this paper we present a dataset on negotiations in Ohio and use these data to investigate how landowners may be advantaged or disadvantaged in these lease negotiations. We find that they are disadvantaged in two ways. First, because energy companies can use persistent and personal strategies to overcome landowner reluctance. Second, because of the institutional context: specifically the widespread use of compulsory unitization. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for equity in energy policy and by drawing out the other potential uses of these data.

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Fig. 1: An example of a contact log.
Fig. 2: Qualitative evidence of persistent and personalized tactics from energy companies.
Fig. 3: Further evidence of the twin disadvantages faced by non-consenting landowners.

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Data availability

The data and the associated codebook are available on the professional website of the corresponding author: https://www.benfarrer.com/ and as Supplementary Information. Source data for the figures were taken from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Oil and Gas Division Unitization Documents website. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

Analysis code is available for replication purposes on the professional website of the corresponding author: https://www.benfarrer.com/.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge helpful comments from A. Gocke, E. Koebele and R. Torres. This work was supported by National Science Foundation award number 1851834: Decision and Risk Management Sciences, awarded to B.F. and R.H.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Visiting Professor of Political Science, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV, USA

    Ben Farrer

  2. Associate Professor of Political Science, Binghamton University, Vestal, NY, USA

    Robert Holahan

  3. Binghamton University, Vestal, NY, USA

    Kellyanne Allen & Tara Riggs

  4. Knox College, Galesburg, IL, USA

    Lydia Allen & Victoria Johnson

  5. Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Jonathan E. Doriscar

  6. University of Illinois, Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Soleil Smith

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Contributions

B.F.: theory, writing, analysis, grant management and data collection. R.H.: grant management and data collection. L.A., J.E.D., V.J. and S.S.: data collection and developing coding scheme. T.R. and K.A.: data collection.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ben Farrer.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Energy thanks Fedor Dokshin, Stephanie Malin, Heidi Robertson and Chad Zanocco for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary analysis, codebook, five tables and one figure.

Supplementary Information 1

Email documenting correspondence between author and Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Supplementary Information 2

First email documenting correspondence between author and Knox College Institutional Review Board.

Supplementary Information 3

Second email documenting correspondence between author and Knox College Institutional Review Board.

Source Data Supplemental Fig. 1

Supplemental Fig. 1 is a screenshot of page 13 of the Bluebonnet B order.

Source Data Supplemental Table 6

To replicate Supplemental Table 6, use this CSV file and the ‘Company E Analysis.do’ do file.

Supplementary Code 1

To replicate Tables 2 and 3a,b and Supplementary Tables 1–5, use this .do file and the data file ‘Deduplicated_Anon_Contact_Logs.csv’.

Supplementary Code 2

To replicate Table 1, use this .do file and the data file ‘Deduplicated_Anon_Applications.csv’.

Supplementary Code 3

To replicate Supplemental Table 6, use this .do file and the ‘Deduplicated_Anon_Company_E.csv’ data file.

Source data

Source Data Table 1

To replicate Table 1, use these data and the .do file ‘Deduplicated Anon Analysis.do’.

Source Data Tables 2 and 3a,b

To replicate Tables 2 and 3a,b and Supplementary Tables 1–5, use these data and the .do file ‘Deduplicated Anon Contact Log Analysis.do’.

Source Data Fig. 1

The original content can be found on page 70 of the 155 pages. This figure is from the Hall Application.

Source Data Fig. 2

Fig. 2 is a screenshot of page 106 of the Hannibal B application. This figure is from the Hannibal B application.

Source Data Fig. 3

The screenshot can be found on page 130. This figure is from the Keller application.

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Farrer, B., Holahan, R., Allen, K. et al. Assessing how energy companies negotiate with landowners when obtaining land for hydraulic fracturing. Nat Energy (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-024-01601-y

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