NORWICH – A Texas-based company, Griffith Land Services, has been soliciting Chenango County property owners with offers to purchase their mineral rights. Letters have surfaced from towns in the northwest quadrant of the county, according to the county planning department.

The move would permanently separate the mineral estate underground from the surface property and is legal. A representative from Griffith did not return phone calls to The Evening Sun, but a copy of their draft deed offers to buy 50 percent of a landowner’s acreage at $1,000 per acre for any and all strata.

The price is lower than the $3,000 to $4,000 per acre lease offers that oil and gas companies placed on the table for Pennsylvania landowners during the Marcellus Shale boom. While those offers never made it into New York before the state banned shale drilling, some Chenango County landowners who previously leased their sandstone rights to Norse Energy, Inc. see that their contracts are expiring soon, and might view the new prospect favorably.

Also appealing, is Griffith’s offer to purchase 50 percent rather than all of a landowner’s subsurface rights. It makes the deal sound as if a partnership were being created between the company and the landowner.

But don’t be fooled, county officials say.

“It looks like it means they have to call you before they act on their portion of ownership, but that’s not true,” said Chenango County Attorney Alan Gordon.” You are giving up the lot. It will severely depreciate the value of your property.”

For assessment purposes, state officials are asking counties’ Real Property Tax Services directors to discourage splitting estates. Chenango County RPS Director Stephen Harris said that opinion is subject to change, and it is ultimately up to local assessors to determine values, but for right now creating two taxing parcels, one land and one mineral, is a new frontier in New York.

“I’m not sure how it’s going to work out. It’s been done for years in other parts of the country, but here in New York, it’s relatively new,” he said, adding that he knows of some mineral rights that are sitting in limbo because they aren’t worth anything.

If taxes on the mineral rights become delinquent and a county steps in to take title, the county is left holding the mineral rights that most likely aren’t worth anything, and no surface parcel. So there’s nothing tangible to sell, he explained.