Barnett Shale

FW Energy, XTO, plan to meet with Mistletoe reps

Fort Worth Energy and XTO Energy, which just over a week ago reached agreement on the terms of a mineral rights lease to offer residents of Fort Worth’s Ryan Place and Berkeley Place neighborhoods, plan to meet with Mistletoe Heights Neighborhood Association representatives next week.

At the same time, leasing rival Four Sevens Energy is stepping up its own efforts in the area, reportedly offering bonus payments as high as $12,500 an acre to property owners who agree to sign leases.

While a number of commercial properties in the area have been leased, neighborhood association leaders have urged homeowners not to sign a lease until the groups can jointly negotiate more favorable terms.

The Fort Worth Energy/XTO lease, which Ryan Place Improvement Association President Dan Roberts said could be mailed to homeowners as soon as this weekend, offers $10,000 an acre in bonus and a 25 percent royalty. Those are rich terms, but the lease also includes restrictions on where drilling and production equipment may be located and dictates environmental and safety issues.

That lease, which includes elements modeled after an earlier lease between XTO, Vargas Energy and the Tanglewood Neighborhood Association, has been proposed as a model or template for other neighborhood associations to use.

Norm Stemple, head of the drilling committee for Mistletoe Heights, said his group expects to meet with XTO and Fort Worth Energy Thursday to work on issues specific to that neighborhood, which is bisected by Forest Park Boulevard just south of Rosedale Street.

He said concerns include the location of a drill site as far north of the neighborhood as possible and the path of a natural gas gathering line that would carry gas from the well to a larger pipeline.

“We’re focusing on environmental issues, not dollars,” Stemple said.

FOR MORE ON THIS STORY, see the Star-Telegram story Saturday.

-- Jim

XTO's Simpson named biz Executive of the Year

XTO Energy Chairman Bob Simpson has been named 2007 Business Executive of the Year by the Fort Worth Business Hall of Fame. Simpson will be inducted at a dinner Tuesday evening at the Fort Worth Club. Proceeds from the event, sponsored by Texas Wesleyan University, Fort Worth Business Press and Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, will benefit the scholarship fund at TWU’s business school.

-- Jim

Four Sevens: We'll be "competitive" on South Side

Check out the S-T Saturday for this report from our energy reporter, Jim Fuquay, who's also an author to this blog:

Four Sevens Energy, which has been signing up leases on the Fort Worth South Side for Chesapeake Energy, says it will continue pushing for leases on the South Side even though XTO Energy and its leasing partner Fort Worth Energy recently reached a deal with a coalition led by the Ryan Place neighborhood association.

The Ryan Place agreement calls for a $10,000-per-acre lot bonus, significantly greater than the $4,000 that Four Sevens and Chesapeake have been offering neighborhoods.

The Berkeley Place neighborhood association, part of the coalition with Ryan Place, also tells the S-T that it expects soon to receive lease offers from XTO. Thus far, Berkeley homeowners have only received offers from Four Sevens and Chesapeake.

Both the Ryan Place and Berkeley associations are endorsing the XTO offers.

Four Sevens isn't saying whether it plans to increase its offer. It tells the S-T only that it expects to be "competitive."

-- Scott

Click here for the full report on the Ryan Place/South Side coalition lease agreement.

(Photos: Bill Conley and Dan Roberts from the Ryan Place association, Berkeley Place July 4th parade)

A dog's day...

One of the editors asked if Jason Smith, the Fort Worth lawyer who's threatening to bring a suit over the proposed Trinity Trees drilling, had ever represented a dog before.

No, but he loves dogs, as you can see here. Smith is a member of the Fort Worth Dog Park Association.

(Photo: Handing Mayor Mike Moncrief a $10,000 check earlier this year to help the city maintain Fort Woof, the east side dog park. At right: Isabelle, mayor of Fort Woof.)

-- Mike

The Trinity Trail: a park, or not a park?

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, is it a park?

We reported Friday that a local woman is fighting Chesapeake Energy’s application to drill for gas next to the river by arguing that the trail has always been considered a park. The city even made the same argument during a 1996 zoning case.

Here's Jason Smith's letter to the city on behalf of Melissa Kohout, along with a clip from our archives about the 1996 zoning case.

If you really want to get technical, you can check out the city drilling ordinance at:

http://www.fortworthgov.org/uploadedFiles/Development/PDF_Files/Applications/gaswell_ordinance.pdf

--- Mike

(S-T photo: Melissa Kohout, and her doberman, Barbie)

Urban drilling and the Barnett Shale = tension

Check out the S-T's front page Saturday morning. Here's a tease to the story from Mike Lee, one of our Fort Worth City Hall reporters and an author of this blog, that you'll see there:

City Councilman Sal Espino should have been at ease Monday night.

He was leading a community meeting on the North Side, the neighborhood where he grew up, in the parish hall where his parents recently celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary.

He was telling a crowd of about 40 residents that the city was about to spend $4.8 million to fix up Rockwood Park.

But the group wanted to talk about the source of the money: a natural gas well next to the park.

The residents, including Fort Worth school trustee Camille Rodriguez, were concerned about noise, truck traffic, pipelines, the potential for accidents. They felt like they hadn’t gotten enough notice about the drilling site.

“If we can do this right, we can benefit the park and we can protect the neighborhood,” Espino said. “If, for whatever reason it doesn’t work, you can hold me accountable.”

The tension over gas drilling is becoming more common as natural gas drilling pushes into the center of Fort Worth.

• During the summer, residents in the Rolling Hills neighborhood learned they were powerless to stop a rig that was planned for the Glen Garden Country Club because the drilling company had obtained waivers from property owners.
• Negotiations are still going on about saltwater injection wells used to dispose of gas drilling waste.
• Most recently, opponents of a drilling site in a grove of trees next to the Trinity River hike-and-bike trail learned that the ordinance doesn’t consider the trail system a park. More than 1,200 people signed a petition opposing the site.

-- Scott

We want to hear from you!

Have a question about the Barnett Shale? We want to hear it, and we'll do our best to respond. You can post your question in any of our blog posts, or email or phone us directly. This fall, we also plan to launch a broader Barnett Shale web page that, among other things, will include an area map and terms of lease offers that different neighborhoods have received. We'd love to see a copy of your lease offer. Please email, mail, or fax it to us.

Here's how to contact us:

Mike Lee, Fort Worth city hall, mikelee@star-telegram.com, (817) 390-7539

Jim Fuquay, energy reporter, jfuquay@star-telegram.com, (817) 390-7552

David Wethe, energy reporter, dwethe@star-telegram.com, (817) 390-7616

Richard Stubbe, assistant government affairs editor, rstubbe@star-telegram.com, (817) 390-7084

Bill Bowen, assistant business editor, energy editor, bbowen@star-telegram.com, (817) 390-7874

Scott Nishimura, business editor, snishimura@star-telegram.com, (817) 390-7808

FAX: (817) 390-7774

To mail copies of lease offers: Scott Nishimura, Business editor, Star-Telegram, P.O. Box 1870, Fort Worth, Texas, 76101.

Thank you!

Drilling deeper for Barnett Shale answers?

You've come to the right place. Welcome to "Blogging the Barnett Shale," the Star-Telegram's new blog on all things-Barnett Shale.

We'll blog on everything from what's going on with leasing offers in your neighborhood, to what's going on down at City Hall, and what's up with the landmen and drilling companies that are working in the Shale. We want this blog to help serve as a conduit for conversations our readers are already sharing with each other. If you know of something going in your neighborhood, please share it with us! Anything's fair game.

Blogging the Barnett Shale will also be only the first part of an expanded coverage of the Shale in the Star-Telegram. In a month or so, we'll launch a Barnett Shale web page containing the latest info on what's going on with lease offers in neighborhoods around the region, graphics on how the drilling process works, a history of the Shale and the significance of the gas play underneath all of our homes, bios of the players, and Q&As on your offer and what happens next.

Thank you for visiting us, and check back often!

-- Mike, Jim, Scott, Bill, and Richard