Southwestern, Chesapeake, and the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia

Southwestern bought a ton of West Virginia acreage from Chesapeake.  It was land that CHK was just sitting on.  SWN is really ramping up their drilling program on it.  This is excellent news for West Virginia mineral owners in the northern panhandle and Monongalia County.  It seems like CHK bought up most of the good minerals in those parts of West Virginia back before 2009.  I say that because there just hasn’t been that much development in those parts, and I know that CHK bought up a ton of land up there because I was working as a landman for them at the time.  I’d been wondering when development was going to start up in the northern panhandle, and why it hadn’t been more developed already.  It’s prime gas real estate.  There’s a ton of development in Ohio and Pennsylvania, just across the borders.  I couldn’t think of a good reason for the northern panhandle to not be developed, other than that CHK just didn’t want to.  My gut told me it was prime, but nothing was happening.  Now it seems that my gut was right, as SWN is getting after it up there.