Barnett Shale

Pipeline updates

It's going to be a big week for natural gas pipeline news. Here are the highlights:

Today is the deadline for at least one resident on Carter Avenue to sign an easement for a pipeline through her front yard or face condemndation. We're still waiting to see the results. Read the previous stories here:

Eastside_neighbors_oppose_natural_gas_pipeline

Homeowner_sent_final_offer_on_pipeline

Another Carter Avenue resident got a letter by e-mail from her daughter, who is serving in Iraq, objecting to the pipeline, and to critics who she says have belittled the neighborhood. Note: She lives on the other side of the street from the proposed pipeline, so there's little chance she'd have the pipeline beneath her yard.

Read the letter here: Carter_Avenue_letter.doc

The Meadowbrook Neighborhood Association is having a meeting to discuss the pipeline and gas drilling at nearby Tandy Hills Nature Center at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Meadowbook United Methodist Church, 3500 Meadowbrook Drive.

-- Mike

Let the pipeline debate begin...

Two summers ago, pipeline right-of-way agents were predicting that the gas pipelines being built to handle the Barnett Shale boom might affect more people than the wells themselves. Judging by the reaction when pipelines began running through neighborhoods, that prediction might turn out to be true.

• Fort Worth's gas drilling task force started digging into pipeline regulations Monday night. Here's the full story.
• At the same time, City Council in North Richland Hills passed its own pipeline regulations. Here's the story: http://www.star-telegram.com/northeast/story/719575.html
• And, folks in Meadowbrook over on Fort Worth's East Side are worried about a pipeline in their neighborhood. Here's the full story.

Judging by the number of spectator's at Fort Worth's meeting, pipelines are getting a lot of attention from neighborhood groups. Watch this space for more details.

-- Mike Lee

Near-record territory for Arlington group

One of the richest natural-gas deals on record in the Barnett Shale was agreed to over the weekend by the North Central Group in Arlington.

Here are the basic details that Axia Land Services, a representative of Chesapeake Energy, agreed to:

• $27,000-per-acre bonus
• 26 percent royalty
• 3-year initial term
• 2-year renewal option at the same bonus rate
• Fee-free lease agreement

The details can be seen on the Web site for Mount Olive Baptist Church, which helped to form the neighborhood group.

The group's boundaries are Road to Six Flags on the north, Division Street on the south, Davis Street on the west and Mesquite Street on the east.

The bonus amount came $200 short of tieing the latest record set by a couple of groups in Burleson, as reported last month. But the royalty rate was more than the Burleson groups' rate of 25.25 percent.

North Central Group's royalty fell just short of the record 26.5 percent set by the Greater Meadowbrook Mineral Leasing Task Force in March. You can read about that story here.

For neighborhood bragging rights, the North Central Group did manage to eclipse the bonus and royalty amounts offered to the nearby SEAPO group.

--David Wethe

FWCanDo's Young unhappy with Meadowbrook deal

Don Young, head of FWCanDo (Fort Worth Citizens Against Neighborhood Drilling Ordinance), isn't happy with the Greater Meadowbrook Mineral Leasing Task Force's decision to recommend a gas lease deal with XTO Energy.

He notes FWCanDo's genesis was in the Meadowbrook area of east Fort Worth. "Eastsiders were informed early on about environmental and safety tradeoffs that erase much of the expected windfall," he writes on FWCanDo's blog. "We pulled back the veils on corrupt elected officials and their industry-friendly ordinance. We scoffed at hte misleaing language of industry ad campaigns. We questioned the ethical lapses of our daily newspaper. We knew about the risk that gas drilling posed to our neighborhood integrity."

For these reasons, he writes he expected the Meadowbrook task force to tell any interested gas companies to "take their gas wells and shove 'em." Click here to visit Young's blog.

-- Scott Nishimura

(Photo: Young at a 2005 protest in east Fort Worth)

No 30-30 deal? FW Eastsiders take $25k, 26.5%

Just so our friends at the FWWeekly can't claim we don't give them their due, we admit it, we got beat on our own damn story today.

On with the news. Fort Worth Eastsiders (Greater Meadowbrook Mineral Leasing Task Force) have confirmed the FWWeekly report that the huge neighborhood bloc has negotiated a record-breaking gas lease deal. Terms include a $25,000-per-acre bonus, 26.5 percent royalty, and five-year term from XTO Energy. The $25k is the highest negotiated neighborhood bonus we know of in the Barnett Shale to date, and the 26.5 percent is a record as well.

It's not the 30-30 deal the task force asked for, but they're taking it.

"In addition, we were able to win the support of XTO in an agreement not to drill anywhere in the neighborhoods within the boundaries of the negotiated lease area, save and except two drill sites in industrial areas immediately adjacent to the Union Pacific rail line on our southern border," says one of the organizers, "Machete" Mike Tansey, an "embedded software test engineer/F-16 Mission Planning Systems" for Lockheed Martin.

The agreement covers the 4,100 acres of neighborhoods in the area bounded by Riverside Drive, Interstate 30, east Loop 820, and the Union Pacific Railroad.

The associations involved are Brentwood Oak Hills Neighborhood Association, Central Meadowbrook Neighborhood Association, West Meadowbrook Neighborhood Association, Chimney Wood Homeowners Association, and Eastern Hills Neighborhood Association. Click here to visit the group's web site.

What property owners should now expect, Tansey says:

• Receive a lease packet from XTO within the "next day or two...with all the information needed should you want to sign the Greater Meadowbrook Oil and Gas Lease."

• Packet will include a letter from the Task Force, copy of the letter of intent signed by the neighborhood presidents, a copy of the lease form, and a schedule of signing parties for the area that will begin March 31. "You may attend any of these scheduled meetings to sign your lease and/or ask questions."

-- Scott Nishimura

(Photos: Meadowbrook Park, Eastern Hills football)

FW Eastsiders say a $25k deal is nigh

Louis McBee, one of the Fort Worth Eastside organizers who's trying to extract a 30-30 deal ($30,000-per-acre bonus, 30 percent royalty) out of one of the gas companies, tells FWWeekly in this story that the neighborhood task force has a "deal pending for $25,000 an acre and 26.5 percent. It's going to be a record-setting deal. Nobody's gotten that much. In addition, should this deal go through, there will be no drilling in Meadowbrook at all."

-- Scott Nishimura

Brentwood/Oak Hills relieved over drilling site

The residents in th Brentwood-Oak Hills neighborhood may have won an important victory over a high-impact drilling site.

Back in the fall, Paloma Resources and its leasing company, Holland Acquisitions, was trying to get waivers for a high impact drilling permit from residents who live near the New Beginnings Church on East Loop 820. The waivers would allowed the company to begin drilling the site without holding a hearing in front of the City Council. Fort Worth's drilling ordinance doesn't allow gas wells within 600 feet of homes without a hearing or waivers from all the affected land owners.

Paloma sold its leases to Chesapeake Energy though, and neighborhood association president Rita Vinson said Chesapeake probably won't use the site because it is "unpermittable."

Vinson also said in an e-mail that Holland Resources, which was leasing mineral rights for Paloma, has backed off of some of its aggressive tactics. Landmen from the company was telling residents as late as last week that their bonus payments would drop if they didn't sign by March 1. Holland officials told Vinson that the two landmen who had been making those statements have been fired.

Holland officials touched off a firestorm in October when they called the police on a group of Brentwood residents who were picketing one of the company's leasing meetings. Some of the residents were given warning tickets for criminal trespass outside a church. Vinson said the police later apologized.

-- Mike Lee

East Fort Worth group swings for the fences: $30,000 and 30%

Nobody can accuse homeowners in east Fort Worth of thinking small when it comes to negotiating for the best mineral rights lease.

The Greater Meadowbrook Mineral Leasing Task Force on Jan. 11 sent letters to Barnett Shale operators seeking a bonus payment of $30,000 per acre ($6,000 minimum) and 30 percent royalty. Lease terms also include a one-year term and 800-foot separation of the drill site from residences and protected uses. The letters seek responses beginning Jan. 21.

According to the group's literature, it represents 3,252 acres made up of 5,440 residential lots and 390 commercial properties in the West Meadowbrook, Central Meadowbrook, Eastern Hills, Chimney Wood, and Brentwood-Oak Hills neighborhoods. The group's boundaries generally are south of Interstate 30, west of Loop 820 and east of Riverside, with the southern boundary varying, and are pictured here.

The West Meadowbrook Neighborhood Association's home page, with links to leasing updates, can be found here.

Click here to read our previous posts on this group.

-- Jim Fuquay

(Photo: Special Olympics golf at Meadowbrook Golf Course)

Having a meeting on the Barnett Shale? Publicize it here, on our new Community Calendar!

5 East Fort Worth neighborhoods to meet

Discussion of a community gas lease for five neighborhoods in east Fort Worth is the subject of a meeting set for 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Thursday at Eastern Hills High School's auditorium. On the agenda is an information session describing the lease, put together by a negotiating task force authorized to research terms of a desireable lease, and time for questions and answers. The lease will be sent to interested drillers, who will be invited to submit offers. The neighborhood associations involved are in the meeting represent Brentwood-Oak Hills, Chimney Wood, Eastern Hills, Central Meadowbrook and West Meadowbrook.

The most recent lease offer was from Holland Acquisitions, on behalf of Paloma Resources, for $7,000 an acre ($1,200 minimum) and 25 percent royalty. That compared to Holland's offer in August of $3,000/acre ($500 minimum) and 20 percent royalty from Holland.

-- Jim Fuquay

(Photo: Eastern Hills football)

From property taxes to injection wells

Here's an archive of recent Barnett Shale stories that appeared in the Star-Telegram:

• Gas drilling isn't likely to push property taxes up much
• Development offers a lesson in low-impact drilling
• Well plan injects pressure into waste water dispute
• On pipelines, city's hands tied
• Burns, Rangel will compete in council runoff
• Speedway Motorsports says it won't share its gas
• FW Council extends moratorium on saltwater injection wells
• Explaining Barnett Shale equipment
• East Side neighborhood group, driller, spar over drill sites
• Audit takes Texas Railroad Commission to task over well inspections
• City residents voice drilling concerns
• Mayor Moncrief says oil, gas income is not a conflict
• City has sharp eye on water disposal
• DFW council member Davis urges restrictions on drilling
• Chesapeake committed to Barnett Shale drilling
• Gas deals' fine print can be costly

-- Scott