Buying land that has a natural gas line on it?

[mapper]

There's a major pipeline across my neighbors property, it is Williams Company main north south line. We've lived here over forty years and nothing adverse has happened. The right of way has two 36" lines and one abandoned 30" line. One of the 36" lines was put in about 30 years ago, which had some impact on the property that it crossed but the company cleaned up the mess and restored everything. Then about 20 years ago they added a bunch of fiber most of it dark at that time, don't know if it still is. That was minimally invasive since they used horizontal drilling to install it.
Once a year we get a mailing from them about the pipeline and what to do if it leaks and how to tell if it is leaking, not likely to smell anything as the gas does not have any oderent in it.
I believe that the property owners received a fair bit of compensation for the new line when it was installed, my neighbor across the road was pretty happy with it.
So having lived near it since we moved here, the only impact was the construction, it was actually rather entertaining, who doesn't enjoy watching big equipment move earth and handle stuff!

 

[LS Tractor Owner]

Have you asked the seller to reduce the price? Maybe it is already compared to other land in the area? Maybe you can get a sweet deal!

Definitely check on the specific use / terms of the RoW.

 

[bdhsfz6]

There's gotta be more to this story that we don't know. Any RoWs that I'm aware of simply give passage/access subject to conditions in the contract/deed. It's still your land.
That having been said, some of these RoWs DO contain provisions...a neighbor of mine purchased an abandoned RR RoW a few years ago. The deed states that he must allow "recreational" use of this property.

I'm not familiar with all the details, just what was published in the paper. I do know the ROW was once owned by a now defunct railroad.

 

[etpm]

Often you will see stuff about companies behaving badly that are really just folks who don't like said companies. However, we have seen here in the USA many petroleum companies who were and are indeed behaving badly. I remember this one: Olympic pipeline explosion - Wikipedia I live about an hour and a half from that disaster location.
However, some companies have a well deserved bad reputation for not maintaining their gas and/or power distribution infrastructure. PG&E in California is one such company. They have done a terrible job of maintaining their power and gas infrastructure. Resulting, for example, in billions of dollars in property damage, the town of Paradise, California destroyed, many people killed, and consistently refusing to change behavior despite previous bad deeds.
If I was looking at a property that had an easement and a right of way I would look at the reputation of the entity or entities that have these easements. Where I live now I have both telephone and power company easements. Both companies have OK reputations and both have responded quickly and in the positive sense to public pressure. I did consider the implications of their easements before I bought our property and it is wise that the OP is doing the same.
My wife, on the other hand, is not happy with the easements even though they really have no impact on us. It is just the potential impact. Like how much our woods could be torn up if PSE decided to replace a pole. So future work on the easement must be considered. But we have a beautiful chunk of land that we live on and the power poles are really quite close to the road so not much would be disturbed. And I know the two power poles lowered the price about 10 grand back in 1997 when we bought it. Which made the property price right at the max we felt we could afford. And price has to be considered. And like I said, we have a beautiful chunk of land. And a beautiful home. Which we own free and clear. And we wouldn't have bought it if it was ten grand higher.
Eric

 

[tallyho8]

As I live in south Louisiana, pipelines are very common in our area.

 

[Jstpssng]

I'm not familiar with all the details, just what was published in the paper. I do know the ROW was once owned by a now defunct railroad.

That's probably why. Railroads often owned their land. A lot of our old tracks have been turned into trails.

 

[ROUSTABOUT]

I have a small 10' electrical easement on one side of the property and a water pipeline (10'dia) adjacent to my property. Both get some pretty regular activity. I keep the weeds abated under the powerlines but they do request access for pole treating and testing. It's a nuisence and the poles and wires do scar the view. I would draw the line on fuel lines. Google says there have been nearly 700 explosions in the last 20 yrs of such lines in the US causing deaths and destruction.

260 deaths from 680 natural gas pipeline explosions in US - Kaieteur News

In 20 years… Kaieteur News – According to statistics from the United States Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), from 2002 to 2021, there were 680 serious natural gas pipeline explosions, resulting in 260 deaths. It was also stated that...

www.kaieteurnewsonline.com

I'm impressed with how many people here have gaslines under their property - I imagine a gasline map would look like a giant spider web over the nation
The article above does mention that one of the causes of these explosions are the older aging iron pipelines installed 60 or more years ago. These lines tend to fail due to the natural rusting of the iron pipe used. Personally I'm skiddish about buying into this.

They've got a coating on them that is tough. I used to sand blast the ends of the old pipe so they could weld a new section in. With a sandblaster that was equal to the blast of a 12 ga. shotgun, it took a while to blast one inch back from the cut. That is some tough stuff. I'm 20 miles from Louisiana and I know they had one line that went to Tulsa, Oklahoma and two guys walk it each year. One guy starts walking, the other fella leaves the truck at the next road crossing, he starts walking. First guy gets in truck and leaves at next road and walks. Second guy drives to next road, so on. Kinda leap frog it. My mother worked in a field office, and she's a woman that knows her business. Her sisters husband worked in the pipeline department for ARKLA GAS. So I knew a lot of folks because of that. They knew service life and replacement times on pipelines and kept things up.

 

[LHF2019]

1998 gas wells went up all over this area and in turn gas lines to move the gas. They have never returned to clear the right of ways or repair a line. Other than a riser at the junction where they connect lines from other wells you would never know they existed. Unless the gas well is on the property and you get the mineral rights there would be no free gas just because the line crosses your property and the owner when the line went in would have received so much per foot if that is how it was done in your area.

 

[3Ts]

...
If I was looking at a property that had an easement and a right of way I would look at the reputation of the entity or entities that have these easements. Where I live now I have both telephone and power company easements. Both companies have OK reputations and both have responded quickly and in the positive sense to public pressure. I did consider the implications of their easements before I bought our property and it is wise that the OP is doing the same.
...

I agree that the reputation of the pipe line company is very important. However, pipe line companies get bought/sold just like other companies. The pipe lines thru our property got bought out by another one, so you may end up with a different company than the one you started with. For us, it was beneficial in that the buyer seems to be more responsible and responsive.

 

[Torvy]

I have never liked the idea that land rights could be divided up by mineral or whatever. I guess at heart I'm a simple guy. I think if you own the land, you should have all of the rights and responsibilities that go with that land. Of an easement is placed on the land, it should require a lease, rather than a one-time payment as the easement does not convey ownership, just usage rights. Either that, or when the land is sold, the easement has to be renegotiated with the new owners. It seems wrong that someone can grant those rights in perpetuity. I get that you don't want someone to cancel rights on something like a pipeline, but annual usage payments make more sense than a one-time thing. In many Texas easements, the size is undefined. A 35 foot easement could become a 100 foot easement if the utility decided to expand.

In our case, the appraiser said the land was not worth as much due to the easements, so we were able to force the price down a bit. The developers wanted to charge the same price per acre on the whole 200+ acre development, but ours is less useful. The price difference was negligible, though. It probably saved us about $5k on 20 acres. Our 'development' consists of 5 or 6 lots from 15-60+ acres. The developer broke the 200 into lots and then added about 20' of board fence and a 16' tubular steel gate to each lot at the logical entrance points. For his 'investment' he doubled his money in about a year.