These new Arlington groups are hard to keep up with. Meadow Parks Estates in North Arlington reports neighborhoods there have morphed into the North Arlington Neighbors group.
Its fast-changing map includes neighborhoods from I-30 on the south, to Green Oaks Boulevard on the west and north, to Cooper Street on the east. The eastern boundary zigzags north of Cooper to abut the Ditto Golf Course (pictured) on its west side and then reconnects with Green Oaks.
We blogged awhile back on lease offers the property owners have been getting from Fleet Oil and Gas and Carrizo Oil and Gas. North Arlington Neighbors now reports that XTO Energy is offering to sign leases at $9,500 per acre, 25 percent royalty, three-year primary term, and a two-year optional term at $9,500 per acre in the Northeast section of the North Arlington Neighbors map.
North Arlington Neighbors reports it includes the Rolling Hills Estates, Meadow Park Estates, Timbercreek, River Legacy Estates, Forrest Creek, and Parkway North neighborhoods. Click here to visit the group's web site, see what neighborhoods they aim to include, and how you can sign a memorandum of intent to be represented by the group.
-- Scott Nishimura
Here's one we're not sure we've seen come over the Barnett Shale desk: a land agency telling property owners there's no rush to sign a lease.
Pardon North Arlington homeowners if they need to lie down for a bit to absorb this one. "We believe 
that it's in your best interest to wait -- do not sign a lease at this time!" Fleet Oil and Gas tells homeowners in letters distributed late last week.
"There's no April Fool's joke," says James Chaffin, president of the Rolling Hills Neighborhood Association. "The reason I know that is this was sent to me on Friday."
Why wait to sign a lease? There are no city-approved drill sites right now, and "it is not in your best interest to sign a lease with an operator who does not have permission to drill from the City of Arlington," Fleet's letter says.
Fleet's the one that's under contract to buy two apartment complexes at Collins Street and Washington Drive, intending to tear them down for a drill site. Fleet says in the letter it expects to have its drill permit approved by the city April 30 and it will likely take up to 12 months to demolish the apartments and have an "operational drill site that is capable of producing royalty income."
"You will not be left out," Fleet's letter says. "You will have the opportunity to sign a lease with the company or companies that have an approved drill site."
Several energy companies are trolling for leases in the Arlington neighborhoods north of I-30, and a loose coalition of several neighborhoods -- they haven't officially banded together -- has been working together to discuss a response.
Click here to read our previous post on Meadow Park Estates, and here to read our previous post on Rolling Hills.
-- Scott Nishimura
Meadow Parks Estates (North Arlington) is organizing, now that agents for Carrizo Oil & Gas have started to distribute lease offers in the neighborhood. The offered terms: $15,000-per-acre signing bonus, 25 percent royalty, standard lease form.
Ellen Boyer, a neighborhood organizer and petroleum engineer, said agents representing Carrizo were going door-to-door with the offer on St. Patrick's Day.
Neighborhood organizers have put up a web site (click here to visit it) and are going door to door, posting fliers and asking homeowners to sign a memorandum of intent to join up with the group.
"The message is, Don't sign yet," Boyer said. Email questions to MPE76012@gmail.com.
She said the neighborhood may be interested in joining up 
with several others nearby that have received lease offers. "Whether we go with the other neighborhoods remains to be seen," she said.
Meadow Parks Estates is bounded by North Cooper Street, Green Oaks Bouleavard, North Davis, and Wayland Drive. The neighborhood has about 800 homes, but no established association, Boyer said.
"We're going to be working the neighborhood over the weekend," she said.
-- Scott Nishimura
(Photos: Butler Elementary, Lamar High School swimming)
Continue reading "Meadow Parks Estates (N. Arl) gets offers on St. Pat's" »
How tough is it to find a drilling site in North Arlington?
So tough that Fleet Oil and Gas has signed a contract to buy two apartment complexes on Washington Drive with plans to tear them down and set up a drilling rig if the city approves the required drilling.
Reporter Susan Schrock reports that the two complexes, Madison Creek and Hampton Hills apartments, have 291 units between them 
and are among 22 apartment complexes in the city's Lamar-Collins zoning overlay. The city last year approved new zoning in hopes of attracting retail and office developments, as well as high-rise residential complexes.
Ooops.
-- Bill Bowen
(Photos: Madison Creek, Hampton Hills)
Northwest Arlington's Extended Oaks group has been fighting divisions within itself and, it says, a landman and Chesapeake Energy.
Now it has a new and improved lease offer to deal with: $15,000 per-acre signing bonus, 25 percent royalty, three-year term, and two-year option at $15,000 per acre.
"I'm still holding off in the sense that the group has to decide from a leadership point of view," says Jerry Pikulinski, one of the group's organizers.
That may be a challenge. Pikulinski acknowledges difficulty in keeping his group together and says one member has been trying to negotiate with Chesapeake's land agent, Axia Land Services, on the sly. "I'm going to have to deal with defectors in my group who are working against the negotiating process," Pikulinski said.
Extended Oaks, which says it represents about 700 property owners in the area west of Randol Mill Road/Westwood, west of Fielder Road, north of Division Street, and east of Crowley Road, has been trying to encourage competition for leases but hasn't found any.
It's been dueling Axia, which Pikulinski says has been trying to "bust" the neighborhood alliance. He points out that Axia's landman, Mark Gordon, bumped up the company's offer to the $15,000 from $12,500 at a recent neighborhood meeting, but that Axia hasn't put anything in writing. Axia also is telling the neighborhood that the offer would include what's in the Extended Oaks boundaries, Pikulinski says, but he says that also is not in writing. Initially, Axia wanted to exclude the area between Oakwood and Fielder, Pikulinski said.
"We don't have anything in the way of an agreement or an understanding," Pikulinski said. "They're not negotiating with us."
Axia and Chesapeake say the neighborhood group has been so intent on encouraging a competitor to come in that it hasn't invited Axia and Chesapeake in to talk. Jerri Robbins, Chesapeake's public affairs manager for the Barnett Shale, says the company would be receptive.
"That's what we're there for," she said.
In the meantime, Robbins issued a defense of Gordon, the landman who has been under attack by leaders of the alliance. Click here to visit the Extended Oaks web site.
"I'm aware of Mark Gordon. Mark Gordon is a good guy. Every interaction I've had with him has been positive," said Robbins, pointing out that Gordon has been receiving good feedback from Extended Oaks homeowners. Gordon referred questions to Chesapeake.
Of Axia's offer, Robbins said, "that's a good offer. Nothing wrong with $15,000 an acre."
She also pointed out that property owners are under no obligation to sign any lease offer. "Property owners have the right to sign when and where they want, or they don't have to sign at all," she said.
Robbins said she'd have to research who is covered under the Axia lease offer. More on that later.
The Extended Oaks association is having a meeting 7 p.m. March 4 at the Arlington Chinese Church, 805 Oakwood Lane, to discuss its next moves.
-- Scott Nishimura
Having a meeting on the Barnett Shale? Publicize it here on our Community Calendar!
(Photo: Randol Mill Park)
More Arlington neighborhoods are organizing responses to lease offers.
The Villages of Fairfield neighborhood group in south Arlington (click here for the group's web site) is organizing to respond to an offer from Four Sevens/Chesapeake Energy. The offered terms: $5,000-per-acre signing bonus, 25 percent royalty, no surface access. The neighborhood says the drill site would be at Bob McFarland Park. Bill Tinsley, Bill_Tinsley@sbcglobal.net, one of organizers, says he and others in the neighborhood have passed out 500 fliers to get things going. The group's initial meeting is 3 p.m. Saturday at the park.
The Villages are north of Southeast Green Oaks, east of Matlock Road, west of the Arlington Municipal Airport and south of Interstate 20. The group initially sought to join the CCNG (Concerned Citizens: Natural Gas Drilling) group in south Arlington, whose neighborhoods are south of Green Oaks, but those neighborhoods had lease offers from different companies and a different drill site, Tinsley says.
The Villages didn't have an established homeowner association, but is organizing one, Tinsley says. He believes his group has effectively been able to get homeowners to hold off from signing leases. "I've been getting email every day," he says.
In North Arlington, the Parkway Central Homeowners 
Association is holding a meeting 7:30 p.m. Saturday Jan. 19 at the Rolling Hills Country Club to discuss its next move on a lease offer from Marsh Operating Co. of Dallas. Marsh has a city-approved drill site at the club and a deal to drill there, and could reach the Parkway neighborhood from that site, the neighborhood says. Parkway is east of the club. Marsh also has secured leases with three nearby churches, the neighborhood says.
"Marsh...is willing to give us a per-acre bonus payment for our mineral rights, plus a 25 percent royalty once the drilling has produced gas to sell," the neighborhood says in a flier publicizing the meeting. Parkway is inviting other nearby neighborhoods to come to the meeting.
(Map: What neighborhood says is potential reach of Rolling Hills Country Club drill site, large blue circle; institutional leases, smaller blue circles.)
-- Scott Nishimura
(Photo: On the swing at McFarland Park)
Having a Barnett Shale meeting? Publicize it here, on our new Community Calendar!
