For more than 150 years, Pennsylvania landowners have sold only the surface of their property while keeping ownership of the oil, gas and mineral rights beneath it. That was - and still is - a common practice in the Commonwealth. Those subsurface assets became separate property, recorded in deeds, recognized by courts, leased to energy companies, and passed from parents to children, and grandparents to grandchildren, for generations.

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This was a practice without controversy. Then came the Marcellus Shale natural gas boom. Suddenly, underground assets became valuable, and that led to a surge in legal fights against the subsurface owning families.