Oklahoma royalty owners said Tuesday they oppose a plan to let producers drill longer horizontal oil and natural gas wells, suggesting it would further complicate royalty payments and make it easier for producers to drain minerals from adjacent lands.

"How do you know you don't have a nozzle under my place? There's no way for me to know," Marceline Piper of the Woods County Mineral Owners Association told producers during a crowded public forum on the so-called unitization plan before the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the state agency that regulates utilities. "Our oil or gas is ours, not our neighbor's."

At least 200 people packed into the commission's courtroom and an adjacent hallway as producers and mineral owners discussed possible changes in commission guidelines that would address new technology allowing producers to drill horizontal wells up to two miles long. Producers must pay royalties to landowners with mineral rights in order to use the minerals.