Euless to hold forum on gas-leasing

The city of Euless will hold a gas-lease forum at 7 p.m. this Thursday at the First Baptist Church, 1000 Airport Freeway in Euless. The forum will focus on the significance of the Barnett Shale, and offer tips on lease negotiations, the drilling process and economic benefits of the Barnett Shale. Among the neighborhood groups that will attend is Midway Park Property Owners, formerly known as Park Addition Residents of Euless. That group has extended its boundaries to Airport Freeway on the south, Texas 157/Industrial Blvd on the west, Harwood Road on the north and Euless Main Street on the east.Organizers include Charles Simmons at charles-simmons@att.net and G.J. Walton at gjwalton@sbcglobal.net.

Here's a copy of the flier the city is distributing: Download euless_gas_lease_forum_flyer.pdf

Expected to speak are:

• Ed Ireland, executive director of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council
• Robert West, partner in the law firm of Whitaker, Chalk, Swindle and Sawyer. He has extensive experience in real estate and oil and gas transactions.

In addition, representatives from Chesapeake, Dale, XTO and Arrington will be there to answer questions. For more information, you can call (817) 685-1623.

--David Wethe

(Photo: Vacation bible school, First Baptist Church)

Comments

[Destiny]

...The EIA has been mostly wrong about oil and gas for the past deacde. Why should we expect them to be right this time? As I said, we have plenty of data that allows us to think for ourselves. All we need is to look at the information carefully and try to connect the dots in ways that the EIA has refused to. Please note that the EIA and IEA had plenty of time to look at the depletion rates but refused to do so until the massive amount of new investment failed to solve the supply side problems and prices rose to over $100. It was only after reality hit them in the face that the agencies and consultants started to look at the field data and concluded that their depletion estimates were off by more than 50%. We can't talk about gas production at this time without looking at the depletion from conventional sources, coal bed methane trends, and the economics of shale. And if you have paid attention to the conference calls you would have learned that Chesapeake and other companies were basing their E&P budgets and earnings projections on the assumption of a NYMEX natural gas price of around $7.25 per MMBtu. That makes most of the wells uneconomical and there is little incentive to spend much on drilling. Given the 70% decline in production over the first year, production will not be going up as we were told. That means that any uptick of economic activity that increases demand will likely cause significant price increases. Of course, given the terrible state of the real economy I doubt that demand will increase by much and expect a further decline at some point. That could mean even lower prices and less incentive for producers to invest in domestic drilling.