I have recently become a landman in the oil and gas industry in Texas. I'm new enough that I really know just enough to be dangerous, but from what I see, something to consider is proximity to other features on your property, ingress/egress, and setting aside an area larger than you might be planning for for them to bring in their equipment and camp out while setting up the rig. There may be some, uh, fragrances you didn't expect, too. Also they will have to bring in a pipeline to get the gas out or you don't get any royalties.

Also check with your neighbors. Gas pressures don't always last a long time. Once the gas bleeds out of the shale (or whatever formations you have), it's done bled out. So get all you can up front and don't expect to retire early. If you can retire early then you're lucky. A friend of mine just hit gas on his ranch near Laredo. I figure he and his brothers in law are each pulling in about $48,000 per month but, like I said, don't go out and buy a new house and Mercedes just yet. What if he only gets a few months and it goes dry? It ain't chicken feed but you still can't retire. CHECK WITH THE NEIGHBORS.

Oh, and even more important than anything I already said, BE SURE YOUR ATTORNEY IS AN OIL AND GAS ATTORNEY and not the guy who wrote your will or sold you your house. I just came from a cotton farming area where they just struck gas. It is amazing the disservice the cotton attorneys are doing for their clients. AMAZING.

My husband is a drilling fluids engineer (in oilfield language, he's the mud man), and his job puts him on the rigsites while oil, gas, geothermal or mineral assay holes are being drilled. While the drilling is relatively short-term compared to the longer-term land management that you're more concerned about, please be forewarned that in order to drill those wells, huge equipment must move in and out -- the drilling rig itself, mud pits, job shacks, generators, water tankers, materials flatbeds, the list goes on and on. Most jobsites I ever visited have been bulldozed and covered with riprap to bear the off-road weight of all the equipment. Diesel generators big enough to power a drilling rig are LOUD, and the power-up/power-down whine when they're tripping for a new bit (pulling all of the pipe back out of the hole to put new bits on the bottom), running casing or cementing, is something else. All of that equipment is too expensive to sit around, so they drill 24/7 with floodlights. Depending on the location and the preferences of the operating company, you will also have trailers for the company man, the tool pusher, the mud man, the mud logger and probably people I've forgotten, who all live onsite. You're looking at tearing up at least a couple of acres. Depending on how the first hole is completed and tested, they are likely to move the rig and drill more than one hole -- and the torn up area grows as all of the equipment moves over to the next spot.

Yes, 10 years down the road you might have finished mitigating the damage and only be looking at a handful of wellheads and a pipeline, but please know that it's a massive assault to the surroundings to get those holes drilled and into production.

I have 32 acres, very similar in size to your place. It's a lot to take care of, but it's not much of a buffer when you start talking about industrial land use. The clear profits would have to pencil out pretty well before I'd put up with well development on my place.

I agree that you need an oil and gas attorney. Pennsylvania's long history with coal and oil should mean that there are a few good ones around. I would also be asking lots and lots of questions about the effect on the local aquifer. When we lived in Bakersfield, the well water in our neighborhood was still fouled several years after they drilled an oil well 2 blocks away. Drilling practices have come a long, long way in terms of downhole environmental protection in the last 20 years, but you really do need some assurances that their industry won't spoil your homeplace and agriculture forever.

Read this:

Leasing Your
Oil and Gas Rights
The Potential Impacts of Well Drilling
and Operation on Your Land

Here is a link that might be useful: leasing gas info