Yankee Reporter Visits Cowtown

The Washington Post has a story today about development of the Barnett Shale gas field here in Cowtown.

Here's the Reader's Digest version:

In Fort Worth Neighborhoods, Residents Know the Drill
Gas Sites Are Seen as Found Money -- or Unwelcome Intrusion

By Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 30, 2006; A03

FORT WORTH --...Welcome to the newest, largest, most productive and most urban natural gas drilling site in the nation. As a huge billboard ad for drilling services just south of downtown Fort Worth says: "If you want a gas well . . . get one!"

Thousands of residents in this metropolitan area of 1.3 million have done just that. They have signed over the mineral rights in the land under their homes for lease bonus payments and the promise of monthly royalty checks for decades from companies erecting well pad sites and derricks all around town.

And it's not just homeowners who can reap benefits. Any entity that owns mineral rights -- whether or not it owns the land above the minerals -- can.

In less than a year, the City of Fort Worth has earned $9 million from signing bonuses and gas royalties after leasing 2,400 mineral acres to companies drilling near three city parks and the municipal airport. The money will fund park and airport improvements...

This gateway to the West, as Texas lore describes Fort Worth, sits atop one of the largest, deepest and richest gas-infused formations of black rock in the United States. Discovered in 1981, the formation, known as the Barnett Shale, was little more than a geological footnote until this past decade, when technological advances made drilling possible through the hard, dense rock...

In the past two years, drilling companies have flocked to the city and the surrounding 14 counties that sit over the Barnett Shale, and there's little to stop them. In Texas, state law gives owners of mineral rights the prerogative over owners of surface land. The companies have to negotiate only with the mineral rights owners to get to the natural gas.

"We cannot prohibit gas drilling within our city, and if we did, we would have to pay compensation to every mineral estate owner within the city limits who would no longer be allowed to access his mineral rights," said Sarah Fullenwider, Fort Worth's assistant city attorney...

"It's one of the best and most exciting plays in North America," said John Richels, president of Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy. The company, which has leased 720,000 acres in the Barnett Shale, has drilled more than 2,500 wells and produced more than 800 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

Though it pains my native-Texan soul to admit it, the yankee reporter from The Washington Post did a pretty good job. Even though the story starts out with the obligatory whining neighbor, overall it's a fairly balanced look at the issue here in Cowtown. 'Sides that, not once did she call Fort Worth a suburb of dallas.