Barnett Shale

Fire personnel investigate natural gas release

Arlington and Mansfield fire departments investigated a natural gas release this morning at Debbie Lane near Matlock Road after residents reported a loud hissing sound and a vapor cloud blanketing their neighborhoods. Arlington fire fighters arrived at the Carrizo Oil and Gas site at 1751 E. Debbie Lane in southeast Tarrant County about 7:44 a.m. and conducted air monitoring after detecting a natural gas odor, Lt. Darrel Whitfield said. The vapor released from the site was "mostly steam with some gas and at no time was anyone in danger of being harmed," according to Mansfield Fire Chief Barry Bondurant. The Arlington Fire Department did not detect measurable amounts of gas in the residential areas close to the location, according to a Mansfield Fire Department news release. The Arlington Fire Department provided the photo above.

For more, see the Star-Telegram report here, and a follow-up editorial here.

-- Jim Fuquay

Residents get their say at task force meeting

The citizens of the shale spoke out Monday night at the city of Fort Worth's gas drilling task force meeting, and they weren't too happy. Here's Mike Lee's full story on the meeting.

The meeting at City Hall was the first chance for residents to make their views heard in front of the task force, which is charged with revising the city's drilling ordinances, particularly on noise issues. It was also the first public meeting since Chesapeake Energy put in its application to drill a well on Eighth Avenue near Elizabeth Boulevard, on Fort Worth's near south side.

The City Council chambers were packed, mostly with people who said they had been on the wrong end of transactions with gas companies.

"The last thing I hear before I got to bed is the compressor," said Joe Cardillo, who lives near a facility in north Fort Worth that he said complies with the current ordinance. "The first thing I hear when I wake up in the morning is the compressor."

Others complained of gas company tactics.

"These people fight you with no mercy," said Bill Mitchell of Aledo, who lost part of his land to a right-of-way for a pipeline and said that even $100,000 in attorney fees couldn't get him so much as a hearing in court.

William Fisher, who said he had been a senior attorney running pipelines for a Houston firm for 25 years, said he was in disbelief that companies planned to pipe "raw unodorized gas" through neighborhoods.

And Jerry Horton, who lives on Carter Avenue and was the subject of a recent Star-Telegram report about plans to build a pipeline down her street, said the task force couldn't make changes fast enough.

"We don't need it tomorrow," she said to applause. "We need it now."

-- Richard Stubbe

Pipeline plans put homeowners on edge

With gas drilling comes pipeline building, and sometimes right through neighborhoods. Here's Mike Lee's story from earlier this week.

Click here to read Mike's story on noise reduction and pipeline proposals the Fort Worth City Council is considering.

And click here to read Jim Fuquay's story on why the industry says we'll need more gas pipelines as demand and production increase.

-- Scott Nishimura

(Photo: Mary Homer of Fort Worth's Greenway is worried about a proposed gas pipeline that will run through her near North Side neighborhood.)

Compressor in Johnson County riles homeowner

  This is a tale of two compressor stations. As far as Rick Putchio is concerned, one of them represents the best of oilfield practices, and one represents the worst. Putchio is upset with the station that EOG Resources built within earshot of a house he owns in rural Johnson County, south of Mansfield, so much so he's created a Web site denouncing the Houston-based producer. That's one of his pictures above of EOG's Big Daddy compression station. It's out in the open with only a large noise barrier on the west side of the facility, between the five compressors and the nearest house.

Just down County Road 514 is a similar-size XTO Energy compression station. But XTO's compressors are housed inside a sound-insulated building. We drove by one breezy morning. The XTO station was barely audible above a stiff southwest wind, while EOG's mechanical whine could be heard at least a quarter-mile downwind. Putchio calls it noise pollution and says he has complained to EOG to no effect. An EOG representative said Friday that the company "addresses each operating site on a case-by-case basis to minimize the impact on our neighbors," but declined further comment.

  Jim Fuquay

Living in the shadows of a drill site (S-T video)

With hundreds of natural gas wells popping up in the region, some residents find living in the shadows of a drill site to be a "pain in the butt." Star-Telegram staff Bill Teeter has the sights and sounds in this video.

-- Scott

More on XTO vs. Chesapeake bidding battle

Here's the latest take from the Mistletoe Heights Neighborhood Association on Chesapeake Energy's new lease offers to the neighborhood. Chesapeake and its agent Four Sevens are competing against XTO and its agent Fort Worth Energy for leases on the South Side. This is an email from Norm Stemple, head of the neighborhood's gas drilling committee, to property owners:

Recently many of us in Mistletoe Heights (including myself) have received an offer from Four Sevens Energy to lease the gas under our property.  In the next week or so you should be receiving a lease from Fort Worth Energy which has been approved by the MH gas lease committee.  As chairman of the MH gas lease committee I urge you to wait and compare the two leases.  It is the opinion of the gas lease committee that the Fort Worth Energy lease provides, in writing, the following key environmental safeguards that are not addressed in the Four Sevens lease.

1) drill site must be over 600 feet from any home in MH

2) no truck traffic associated with drilling on any streets in MH

3) compressor must be over 1000 feet from any home in MH

4) no gas transmission lines through MH

5) noise level is limited to specified decibels above ambient.

Three minor differences include:

a) mineral rights owner makes no warranty of title

b) royalty payments not reduced by "delivery, processing or marketing costs"

c) shut-in royalty is $25./acre instead of $1./acre

In comparing the two leases please consider the safeguards as listed above as very important.

-- Scott

Urban drilling and the Barnett Shale = tension

Check out the S-T's front page Saturday morning. Here's a tease to the story from Mike Lee, one of our Fort Worth City Hall reporters and an author of this blog, that you'll see there:

City Councilman Sal Espino should have been at ease Monday night.

He was leading a community meeting on the North Side, the neighborhood where he grew up, in the parish hall where his parents recently celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary.

He was telling a crowd of about 40 residents that the city was about to spend $4.8 million to fix up Rockwood Park.

But the group wanted to talk about the source of the money: a natural gas well next to the park.

The residents, including Fort Worth school trustee Camille Rodriguez, were concerned about noise, truck traffic, pipelines, the potential for accidents. They felt like they hadn’t gotten enough notice about the drilling site.

“If we can do this right, we can benefit the park and we can protect the neighborhood,” Espino said. “If, for whatever reason it doesn’t work, you can hold me accountable.”

The tension over gas drilling is becoming more common as natural gas drilling pushes into the center of Fort Worth.

• During the summer, residents in the Rolling Hills neighborhood learned they were powerless to stop a rig that was planned for the Glen Garden Country Club because the drilling company had obtained waivers from property owners.
• Negotiations are still going on about saltwater injection wells used to dispose of gas drilling waste.
• Most recently, opponents of a drilling site in a grove of trees next to the Trinity River hike-and-bike trail learned that the ordinance doesn’t consider the trail system a park. More than 1,200 people signed a petition opposing the site.

-- Scott