Buying Property With Pipeline Easement

How much money should landowners get when an oil or gas pipeline crosses their land? As it stands, landowners receive a one-time payment roughly based on the length of the pipeline, with rates varying from $5 to $50 per foot or more for a Marcellus or Utica shale pipeline right-of-way agreement.

You are willing to either share in or bear the cost of land maintenance and are now ready to negotiate. Reducing the impact the easement has on the neighbor will help convince him to say yes. Include in the negotiations elements that include his continued use and rights to share that parcel of land with you.

A right-of-way is a strip of land typically about 50 feet wide (depending on location) containing a pipeline or other utility. Many rights-of-way contain more than one underground pipeline or utility and can be wider depending on the number of infrastructure assets within.

Pipelines can reduce property values by 5 to 40 percent by making them less attractive to potential buyers, according to local Realtors.

What is a Pipeline Easement? Generally, an easement is a legal interest that allows someone the right to use another's property for a certain purpose. A pipeline easement specifically gives the easement holder the right to build and maintain a pipeline on a landowner's property.

Easements are treated as a recovery of the basis of the property first, with any excess proceeds treated as capital gain, which is taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income. The basis of property that offsets an easement is limited to the basis of the affected acres or square footage.

If an easement is 50 rods long, that is almost an acre. In a recent case, a pipeline company paid some owners $180 per rod and others $767 per rod for the same project.