Old oil and gas wells are common across the region.

For landowners, older wells can come with headaches. 

Gordon Powell of Fowler, Trumbull County, said he lost out on an opportunity for half a million dollars after he was approached by a gas company because he doesn't have the rights to the oil and gas wells on his property.

This is because of a decades-old lease agreement entered in the past. 

Powell has extensive acreage with oil and gas wells, but the daunting process to reclaim his mineral rights is stopping him from reaping financial benefits and leaving him uncertain over his responsibility to manage the oil and gas wells in the future. 

Valley Attorney Alan Wenger said, "It's a major problem for folks who want to have their oil and gas rights utilized. They want to find a lessee and get royalties."

Wenger said the crux of the issue lies in longstanding lease agreements that bind property owners and can limit their power to negotiate or enter a new lease under a landowner's terms. 

"That lease oftentimes holds that property by production from an old well that is hardly producing, but it still prevents the surface owner or the mineral owner from leasing to someone else," he said. 

Wenger said trying to regain control of mineral rights is daunting and expensive, and added that old leases are often vague.

On top of this, companies holding the original leases may no longer exist in many cases.

The first step for a landowner to move forward and seek a remedy is to get the lease from the county recorder and understand that lease.

People can also research the company that's in the lease under ODNR's well locator function.

"Often it's difficult to locate someone who will respond," he said, "And if that doesn't happen, a next step would be to do a title search and mineral title search, which is a detailed, difficult and expensive."

The bottom line is that people trying to reclaim mineral rights can be left with few options and potentially lots of costly, legal hurdles, such as filing a lawsuit if all else fails.

"Find the lease and read it, and if there are clear demarcations in there as to what the company has to do or forfeit the lease, then follow the lease," Wenger said, "If not, then go to ODNR, find the owner of the well, and contact them and try and get them to voluntarily release the lease. And if that fails, then look at the next steps which would be following the statutory process to have the lease forfeited."

The last resort is that landowners could ask the court to declare who owns the minerals. 

"Ultimate resource would be the courts and filing a lawsuit and asking the court to declare who owns the minerals," he said, "which is obviously expensive, time-consuming."