Split Estate at the Appalachian Film Festival

By: James Knapp

The Appalachian Film Festival, which took place at the Historic Palace Theatre in Frostburg on September 17th, screened documentary films that depicted the hardships and difficulties that result from life in Appalachia and similar regions. One of the films, entitled Split Estate, exposed the intrusive drilling practices of the unchecked oil and gas industries.
Deborah Anderson’s film Split Estate, which centers upon the activities of oil and natural gas companies operating in and around the Rocky Mountains, showed the devastating effects that the industry has caused both environmentally and for the residents of the area.
One way in which the industry has invaded residential boundaries is by an often overlooked part of landowning called Mineral Rights; the concept of mineral rights is that even if a resident owns a plot of land, another resident or corporation can buy the rights to the resources under that land. This practice goes back to when a king was able to lay claim to precious metals, such as gold and silver, that may be hidden under someone else’s land. In the film, a New Mexico resident said “The industry has the mentality that it’s ours (the industry’s) and you’re (the resident) in our way.” The resident had experienced the intrusiveness of an oil company first hand, as they had bought the mineral rights under his property and began drilling with almost no regard to his presence; the company even went as far as to pile refuse material in his personal cemetery.
A couple in Colorado purchased a 40 acre plot of land in 1993, later to discover that they did not own the mineral rights to their land. As a result of this oversight, an oil well was drilled a mere 200 feet from their front door. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for this to happen because about 85% of Colorado residents don’t own the mineral rights to their land; and as stated by John Kerry in an interview included in the film, “The energy policy has been to drill, drill, and drill some more.”
Aside from the oil and gas companies’ intrusive approach to acquiring the resources under privately owned land, the film also exposed their disregard for environmental concerns of the region. As a result of the Bush Administration’s energy policy, oil and gas companies became exempt from numerous EPA regulations including the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. Due in part to a widely used drilling technique called “fracking,” which involves fragmenting the rocks underground so that natural gas can be siphoned, natural gas has seeped out into rivers and streams in the Rocky Mountain region, and some water sources, even those used for drinking water in residential areas, have been contaminated.
In the final minutes of the film, a map of the United States appeared on the screen to show that as the hunt for oil and natural gas continues, the fuel industries are gradually beginning to move farther East; even as far as Pennsylvania. When one audience member was asked what he thought of the film and the information it had presented, he replied only with the word “scary.” This is to say that as an Appalachian community, it is frightening to believe that something as abhorred as the events chronicled in Split Estate, could soon be so very close to home.