Butler v. Charles Powers Estate ex rel. Warren

OPINION

Justice BAER.

We granted allowance of appeal to consider whether a deed executed in 1881, which reserved to the grantor the subsurface and removal rights of “one-half [of] the minerals and Petroleum Oils” contained beneath the subject property, includes within the reservation any natural gas contained within the shale formation beneath the subject land known as the Marcellus Shale Formation.1 The trial *887court in this matter, relying on the 1882 decision of this Court in Dunham & Shortt v. Kirkpatrick, 101 Pa. 36 (Pa.1882), and its progeny held that because the deed reservation did not…