“Do you support an amendment to permit the presence or production of oil or gas to be included in the methodology used to determine the fair market value of an oil or gas well for the purpose of property assessment?”

BATON ROUGE, La. (KLFY) – Louisiana voters said ‘yes’ to a statewide change in the way property taxes are collected on oil and gas wells.

Voters passed the amendment with 58% of the vote.

Currently, when an oil or gas well is sold in Louisiana, the actual value of the minerals beneath the well are not taken into account when calculating property taxes. This has led to a difficult – and some would say unfair – process in figuring out property taxes for the wells.

Under the new amendment, a well’s production value will be figured into the fair-market value of the well. High-producing wells will be worth more while lower-producing or shut-in wells will be worth less.

Other than a change in property taxes for the landowner, it’s unclear what kind of economic impact the new amendment will have across the state.