The Barnett Shale's meant good business for churches lately. Neighborhood gas lease meetings have overrun private homes and the local Starbucks. Now they're overrunning the local church.
Not that the churches have any problem with that. Latest case: the St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church on Pleasant Ridge Road at Green Oaks Boulevard in southwest Arlington, host of back-to-back nightly meetings this week for two Lake Arlington-area neighborhood groups that brought in several hundred homeowners. The second meeting, hosted by the CATS group, drew 1,500 people Monday night, was standing room-only, and triggered traffic jams on Green Oaks, said Jeff Richman, jeffreyrichman@sbcglobal.net, one of CATS' organizers.
At the meeting, CATS agreed to merge with another group, Lake Arlington Property Owners, that -- like CATS -- was also organizing homeowners in the area around Miller Elementary School and hosted its own meeting at the church, Richman said.
The new, larger group will be called CATS, Richman said. Its boundaries
stretch from I-20 on the south to Pioneer Parkway on the north, Little Road on the east to Lake Arlington on the west.
Homeowners in the neighborhoods have received lease offers from Paloma Resources on behalf of Chesapeake Energy, and Permian Land on behalf of XTO Energy. Paloma is offering a $15,000 per-acre signing bonus and 25 percent royalty Permian is offering an $18,000 per-acre bonus and 25 percent royalty. Both are offering three-year terms, with two-year renewals. Not all homes have received both offers, Richman said.
"Neither one has blanketed the area," said Richman, a salesman of packaged trial-size toiletry products who has taken so many calls since he began organizing CATS that he says his wife Kathie now answers the phone, "Jeff Richman's personal secretary."
Richman said CATS is working on signing up homeowners, getting them to hold off signing leases, and determining whether any drilling company has secured drill sites. Next up after that: Contacting companies that have drill sites, he said.
While the XTO bonus is among the highest neighborhood bonus offered in Tarrant County, Richman said CATS believes it can do better on the bonus. He also said the group wants to negotiate the best possible royalty structure, acreage measurements for purposes of calculating the bonuses and royalties, "and all the little extras that add up." He also said it's important to go with a drilling company that has secured drill sites.
Click here to visit CATS' web site.
Click here to read our previous post on CATS.
-- Scott Nishimura
Having a meeting on the Barnett Shale? Click here to publicize it on our Community Calendar!
(Photos: Lake Arlington, Miller Elementary kids donate stuffed animals to Arlington Police; Alamo history program at Miller Elementary)