and the natural gas industry. But just walk into the Keystone Pork, Poultry Progress and Mid-Atlantic Manure Summit here at the expo center in Lebanon County, put your hands on the propane-shaped stress ball, and you’ll start to understand it.
Natural gas development over the past 15 years has had a significant impact on agricultural stakeholders in this state. The partnership between two leading economic sectors in this state, natural gas and farming, has led to farmers receiving royalty payments from natural gas companies in return for leasing out the minerals found on their lands.
Jonathan Fritz, who has served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives since 2017, said what he has seen in the rural swaths of Wayne and Susquehanna counties thanks to the natural gas industry has improved his constituents’ overall quality of life, and “It has also contributed to young people to stay here rather than move away because of new opportunities.”
A royalty payment is traditionally a percentage share of the production paid from a natural gas-producing well paid to families, farmers, and landowners. In Pennsylvania, over $193 million was paid to farmers and landowners due to liquefied natural gas exports, while the amount paid out in Ohio to landowners was $181 million.
“Everyone is looking at the impact on the industry as well as the national security, we also have to remember how it impacts our farmers and the economic opportunities they are going to lose out on,” Herr said.Anne Bradbury, CEO of the American Exploration and Production Council, said when America is the world leader in LNG exports, it isn’t just the people in the industry that benefit, but everyone in the country does in ways they perhaps don’t always think about.