If he doesn’t own the mineral rights, and never did, I don’t see how he can legally prevent drilling. Since he’s a billionaire, he can buy off the courts, but an honest judge would tell him where to shove his Mars Bars.
His professed concerns over the supposed huge amounts of water used in drilling are BS.
To produce coalbed methane, the natural gas in question, you commonly have to pump the water out of the coal to get the methane to desorb and be producible as natural gas.
Commonly, though, those same coal beds serve as aquifers in the region, and the water is produced for human and animal consumption.
I'd wager that is the source of the conflict.
They are? How do you know?