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Second, American farmers and other private landowners own the minerals underneath their land and are paid lucrative access fees and royalties by shale drilling companies to extract the gas.
"It makes life a whole lot easier and will make life a whole lot easier for the grandkids," Texas farmer Bubba Steen told The Australian Financial Review on a visit to his cattle farm a couple of years ago where oil rigs were pumping deep beneath the surface.
"Oil cheques" worth hundreds of thousands – or in some cases millions – of dollars have landed in landowners' letterboxes, though the payments have declined over the past couple of years due to the oil price crash and reduction in drilling rigs.
To boost gas supply, South Australia last week proposed paying landowners 10 per cent of the royalties collected from the underground gas sold from a property where it is being extracted. Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce told Fairfax Media at the weekend that a new nationwide scheme to divert a share of government royalties to farmers will overcome furious opposition to coal seam gas in the bush.
