Rush to Drill for Gas Creates Mortgage Conflicts – Ian Urbina, NYTimes.com 10-20-11
October 20, 2011
Rush to Drill for Gas Creates Mortgage Conflicts – NYTimes.com.
Check out this article in today’s New York Times:
There’s some really important documents that explain out all of the details about what the conflicts are and what rules are being broken. You can read through them here, and they’ve got little bubbles that show you what the important parts are and what they mean. Very worth checking out.
It makes sense. Fracking for shale gas and oil requires thousands of wells, many of which are drilled near where people live. Drilling accidents and the environmental problems with fracking happen on land that people own, land that people have mortgages on, land whose property value will plunge if the water goes bad or people get sick. The mortgage industry wrote up rules that are supposed to protect banks against these risks. These rules would bar wastewater impoundment pits near people’s houses, would require minimum distances between a home and a gas well, would give the bank the right to review the lease the landman was offering so they could make sure the gas company wouldn’t be allowed to tear up the surface of the land. But these rules aren’t being followed.
Check out some of the documents that explain how some small bankers and credit union officials see the problems:
GDACC 
