Barnett Shale

South Arlington group reports $17,000 lease deal

The South Arlington group Concerned Citizens: Natural Gas Drilling (CCNG) is reporting a negotiated lease deal with Cheaha Land Services that includes a $17,000-per-acre signing bonus and a 25 percent "cost-free" royalty. Click here to visit CCNG's web site for more information, including a map of the coverage area.

-- Scott Nishimura

More South Arlington homeowners organize

Several south Arlington neighborhoods have organized to approach gas lease offers. Here's the update:

Nine neighborhoods -- Collinwood Village, Colonial Estates, Fairfield, Greenleaf Addition, South Hampton, Summerwood, Valley Springs, Whispering Meadows, and Winding Creek -- have organized together and retained two attorneys who will act as agents and be paid based on an increase over the current offered signing bonuses. Here's the group's web site and contact info. Interested property owners can also contact attorney Daniel Webb at inquiry@danielpwebb.com. Here's a map of the group's coverage area: south of Green Oaks Boulevard, east of South Cooper Street, north of Sublett Road and Lynn Creek, and west of Cravens Road. Matlock Road bisects the map.

The group says it expects to begin talks with several energy companies it says have expressed interest, including Carrizo Oil & Gas, Paloma Resources, Four Sevens/Chesapeake Energy, XTO Energy, and Fleet Oil and Gas. So far, Cheaha Land Services, acting on behalf of Carrizo, is the only company that has offered to sign leases broadly in the neighborhoods, said Brian Smith, bskipsmith@sbcglobal.net, a Summerwood property owner and one of group's organizers.

Cheaha has been offering to sign leases in the neighborhoods at signing bonuses of $700 per property, but recently offered to bump that up to $1,000 during face to face visits with homeowners, Smith said. In recent conversations between his group and Cheaha, Cheaha representatives appeared open to negotiating with the large group, which represents 2,500 parcels of land, Smith said. Cheaha landmen are still aggressively working the neighborhoods, passing out business cards the day before Christmas, Smith reports.

He also said agents for Hollis R. Sullivan, which has been offering to sign leases elsewhere in south Arlington and Kennedale, have offered leases to some homeowners in the southern portion of his neighborhood group.

Smith says he believes the neighborhoods have been successful at getting homeowners to hold off. An estimated 400-500 property owners showed up to a Dec. 17 meeting.

"We had a very good showing, and we had people who couldn't go who called," he said. Here are Blogging the Barnett Shale's previous posts about leasing in south Arlington.

Neighborhoods off of Turner Warnell, east of Soutb Cooper Street, and west of Matlock Road, almost to Mansfield, are organizing and report offers from Dale Resources on behalf of Chesapeake and Hollis R. Sullivan.

The main two neighborhoods are South Pointe and South Pointe II, said Thomas Lerch, thlerch@tx.rr.com, one of the group's organizers. Dale/Chesapeake is offering to sign leases at $1,000 per lot signing bonuses, 25 percent royalty, three-year term, two-year option, and 640-acre pooling, Lerch said.

Sullivan started by offering to sign leases at $200 per lot bonus, but has since raised that to $1,000. It's also offering a 22 percent royalty and 320-acre pool.

Lerch said his group plans to hold an open meeting Jan. 5 to discuss its next moves. More details to come.

UPDATE: This group has named itself Property Owners of South Arlington. Click here to visit their web site.

-- Scott Nishimura

(Photos, clockwise from top: Basketball pep rally, UIL band competition, Summit High School; Charlotte Anderson Elementary School.)

Cheaha confirms it dismissed contract agent

Residents of Summerwood and Colonial Estates additions in south Arlington have been scrambling to try and respond to lease offers they've received from Cheaha Land Services, which has been working Arlington on behalf of Carrizo Oil & Gas.

So, folks weren't happy when word got out that one of Cheaha's agents was removing fliers that the neighborhood had posted on homeowners' doors. One of the homeowners complained. The result: a Cheaha official confirmed Friday afternoon that the company dismissed an agent who was working as a contractor.

The agent's behavior was "not acceptable," a Cheaha official told Blogging the Barnett Shale. "That's not the reputation we want to uphold. There's no reason to take anyone's property. We do not contract out services to people that don't uphold our standards."

The Summerwood homeowners have also put out the word that homeowners should be wary of landmen delivering lease offers, then later calling homeowners to alert them to typos in the leases that needed to be corrected by the company. The neighborhood suggested that was a high-pressure tactic to confuse homeowners into signing.

The Cheaha official said that isn't the case. The official said the only errors "I'm aware of" were clarifications in legal descriptions that needed to be dealt with to ensure the leases were good.

-- Scott

They're gonna need a bigger Starbucks...

The Starbucks at Green Oaks and South Cooper Street in south Arlington can handle a meeting of 25 people. Apparently, it's not large enough for 250.

Residents of the Summerwood Addition in South Arlington met at their neighborhood Starbucks Monday night to discuss lease offers they've received from Cheaha Land Services, which is signing up leases in Arlington on behalf of Carrizo Oil & Gas. Brian Smith (bskipsmith@sbcglobal.net), one of the organizers, says he got there early and began talking to some other property owners who had already shown up. Ten minutes later, he says, "the sidewalk was packed. There were probably 100 people there."

More people kept arriving, and Smith and his fellow organizers spent 45 minutes collecting names and email addresses, because the neighborhood has no organized association. By the time the group moved to a property owner's home for discussion, there were 250 people, Smith said. Smith says the Starbucks manager approached him Thursday morning when he came in for a cup. "Next time you have one of those meetings, let me know, because we were a little shorthanded," Smith says the manager told him.

The good thing: Summerwood now has the makings of a neighborhood association. "We talked about what we're going to do next," Smith said.

Summerwood is also linking up with Colonial Estates, an adjacent neighborhood that also has no association, and is being offered the same terms by Cheaha/Carrizo. The drill site, between Green Oaks and Sublett Road west of Matlock Road, is the same for the two neighborhoods, Smith said.

The two neighborhoods are forming a group that plans to visit with an attorney as early as this weekend, Smith said. The idea would be to split the cost of the lawyer among the homeowners.

Tuesday night, Smith says a group of about 150 people from Summerwood -- and three representatives from Colonial Estates -- went to a lease meeting held by Cheaha. "We went as a group to see if we could talk to them as a group, and to let them know we had intentions to approach them as a group," Smith said. "They weren't set up to do that."

He said a "few" homeowners signed their leases at the meeting.

-- Scott

More offers in South Arlington

More South Arlington residents are getting lease offers these days. Residents in the Sherwood Village Addition -- south of Bardin Road, east of Matlock Road, and west of Arlington Municipal Airport, zip 76018 -- report a lease offer from Four Sevens/Chesapeake Energy. The financial terms: $5,000-per-acre signing bonus,  25 percent royalty, no surface access operations.

Four Sevens/Chesapeake is also wasting no time trying to get property owners signed up, scheduling "community meetings" 4 p.m.-8 p.m. Nov. 20 and Nov. 27 at the Quality Inn, 121 E. Interstate 20 in Arlington.

-- Scott

Noodling gas leases at a South Arlington Starbucks

The Barnett Shale has driven some business lately for the Starbucks at Green Oaks and South Cooper Street in Arlington.

A group of property owners in the Summerwood Addition, which doesn't have a neighborhood association, are trying to keep their neighbors from rushing into signing lease offers they received recently. Agents for Cheaha Land Services, signing leases on behalf of Carrizo Oil & Gas, offered $700 per lot and a 25 percent royalty and followed up with phone calls.

Leaders of the neighborhood group went door to door on Halloween and passed fliers out, trying to organize homeowners. Thirty Summerwood property owners met Monday at the Starbucks, and they're planning to meet there again at 7 p.m. Monday Nov. 12. One possible next move: to try and band together with a neighboring homeowner association. The group is inviting interested homeowners to attend and are asking owners who haven't signed to hold off.

Brian Smith, one of the organizers, said the agents contacted some of the property owners about typos in their lease offers and offered to drop by to make the changes. Smith said it's important not to get confused and end up unintentionally signing the lease agreement in those cases.

"If you're contacted about typos and you haven't signed, don't sign," he said.

The proposed drill site would be on 10 vacant acres between Sublett Road and Green Oaks, west of Matlock, Smith said.

Smith is asking interested property owners to contact him at  bskipsmith@sbcglobal.net.

-- Scott

South Arlington neighborhoods get offers

South Arlington neighborhoods are being blitzed with gas lease offers. Residents in the Summerwood Addition near Green Oaks Boulevard and South Cooper Street report Cheaha Land Services, signing leases on behalf of Carrizo Oil & Gas, has been dropping lease offers off and following them up with telephone calls. Homeowners say the lease offers haven't been accompanied by cover sheets offering specific per-acre bonuses. But one homeowner with slightly less than a fifth of an acre said Cheaha offered a $700 lot bonus. The lease offer is for three years, witha  25 percent royalty.

Cheaha and Carrizo have been signing up leases in central Arlington. Click here for our previous blog post on them.

-- Scott