NORWICH – A Texas-based company, Griffith Land Services, has been soliciting Chenango County property owners with offers to purchase their mineral rights. Letters have surfaced from towns in the northwest quadrant of the county, according to the county planning department.

The move would permanently separate the mineral estate underground from the surface property and is legal. A representative from Griffith did not return phone calls to The Evening Sun, but a copy of their draft deed offers to buy 50 percent of a landowner’s acreage at $1,000 per acre for any and all strata.

The price is lower than the $3,000 to $4,000 per acre lease offers that oil and gas companies placed on the table for Pennsylvania landowners during the Marcellus Shale boom. While those offers never made it into New York before the state banned shale drilling, some Chenango County landowners who previously leased their sandstone rights to Norse Energy, Inc. see that their contracts are expiring soon, and might view the new prospect favorably.

Also appealing, is Griffith’s offer to purchase 50 percent rather than all of a landowner’s subsurface rights. It makes the deal sound as if a partnership were being created between the company and the landowner.

But don’t be fooled, county officials say.