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Pipeline expert to deliver strong advice during Power Show Ohio
 


By DOUG GRAVES
Ohio Correspondent

COLUMBUS, Ohio — What started out in western Pennsylvania more than a decade ago has spread quickly into central Ohio, creating havoc inside the agricultural community. It is making its way towards northwest and west-central Ohio and soon may spread to other parts of the state.
What’s spreading are natural gas pipelines – and some experts say the agricultural community better be prepared for the invasion.
“From local service lines to interstate systems, Ohioans will see close to 38,000 miles of pipeline development over the next decade, and there’s a lot they need to be thinking about and doing in preparation for all this,” said Dale Arnold, Ohio Farm Bureau (OFB) director of Energy, Utility and Local Government Policy.
“Farmers will really need special legal counsel on these matters, as a lot of their decisions will be short-term and long-term. They need to be cautious.”
Arnold will give a pipeline development briefing during this year’s Power Show Ohio, Jan. 29-31 at the Ohio Expo Center in Columbus.
So high is the interest in the natural gas topic that he has been asked to address the audience on Friday and Saturday of the show.
He will discuss what landowners should consider in negotiating effective easement agreements with energy service providers. “This includes not only ET Rover Pipeline Project and Spectra Energy pipeline projects, it also includes intrastate pipeline projects hauling ethane,” Arnold said.
“When you look at all the utility service line upgrades that are going to be done in concert with all this intrastate pipeline going in, as well as pipeline for oil and gas drilling and transporting the byproduct from the wells to central collection points, there’s pipeline going in all over the place.”
He said the inclusion of electric transmission line development will be addressed as well.
“We have people all over the state who are going to be impacted by energy development,” Arnold said. “It might be oil and gas, electric infrastructure – we’re talking about a lot of things going on here.”
He has traversed most of Ohio’s 88 counties and worked with many OFB offices across the state, discussing the aspects of energy development.
“I’m talking with landowners in northwest Ohio who have just finished negotiating an easement for an electric transmission line across their property. And, get this – they all received a letter pertaining to a pipeline going across this same ground. And a lot of these people are in the farming communities. All this is spreading.”
Arnold will share many of his findings and messages from meetings with those attending this year’s Power Show Ohio.
“The focus of my educational seminar at the show,” he explained, “is to show people where this kind of activity is taking place, and where eminent domain does and does not apply.
“I want to let the people know of their responsibility, and opportunity for farmers and landowners to negotiate an effective easement agreement. That will be huge. I want to give them points they need to ask questions about and how to select good legal counsel to represent them. They’ll need to ‘lawyer up.’”
At Power Show Ohio, he will also talk about energy market trends, pipeline construction and remediation standards, farmland preservation, eminent domain, government agency jurisdiction and selecting effective legal counsel.
“There are things people need to think about and discuss for the long term, say, 30 years down the line,” Arnold said. “A lot of people are finding out that everything and anything is negotiable, even under eminent domain provisions. It’s all negotiable. The rules and regulations and how we treat this today is much different than when these same projects were being faced by our grandparents and even our great-grandparents.
“The focus of my talk both days is not to give them everything they need to know, but to get them on their first one or two good steps down this journey and tell them where to get more information.”
Arnold has been working for OFB since 1985 and has been an organization director and regional supervisor. As director of Energy Services, he works with Farm Bureau leaders to create effective energy policy on local, state and national levels, as well as establish programs that help farm, small business and residential energy consumers control their energy costs. He represents members on a variety of energy use advisory boards and commissions organized by government, utilities, industry and consumer groups.
“Farmers will really need special legal counsel on these matters because a lot of people need to understand that a lot of the decisions they make are short-term, meaning 30 years, as compared to long-term, which is two to three generations,” he said.
“There a number of things they need to think about that they probably don’t think about when they sign the dotted line on one of these particular agreements. Once you sign on that dotted line, all negotiations cease.”
1/22/2015