The Latest on Mineral Drilling in Bedford

Critics of urban drilling want gas wells to be farther from Fort Worth homes
By MIKE LEE Originally posted in the Fort Worth Star Telegram

FORT WORTH
In the Crestwood neighborhood, west of downtown, neighbors are going door to door to fight a high-impact drilling permit for a site near Greenwood Cemetery.

The plan calls for a natural gas drill site in a grove of old-growth trees along the Trinity River. The original plan called for dozens of trucks serving the site to rumble down a narrow blacktop road, past a Little League field and a playground, behind more than 60 houses, and along the Trinity River hike-and-bike trail.

The site is near Rockwood Park, so it will require a hearing before the City Council. And it’s just one example of what may be the future of gas drilling in Fort Worth.
The city requires gas wells to be 600 feet from houses, parks, churches, schools or hospitals, unless companies get a special high-impact permit. The system, in place for two years, has been controversial from the beginning, and both proponents and critics of urban gas drilling want to change it. A task force that is rewriting the city gas ordinance is expected to begin discussions in a few weeks.

Fort Worth has gotten requests for about 120 high-impact permits since the system was set up, out of about 1,150 wells in all. Of those, more than half — 64 — have been issued in the last year, and 50 have been issued in the last seven months.

In most of those cases, the energy companies got waivers from the surrounding property owners. The City Council has considered about 10. The council has never voted against a high-impact permit, although a few have been delayed and later withdrawn.
In the last year, Chesapeake Energy has asked for 44 high-impact permits. XTO Energy has requested 13, and Devon Energy has applied for five. Frost Brothers and Quicksilver Resources have requested one each.

Higher stakes?
Whatever happens in Crestwood, many observers agree that gas drilling in the Barnett Shale will continue to move closer to homes in established neighborhoods.
"The more you drill up the easy sites, the more you’re going to get into the hard ones," said Councilman Carter Burdette, who represents Crestwood.
The distance between gas wells and surrounding homes has been one of the most basic arguments since gas drilling began in Fort Worth. As much as half of the land in the city, which lies above the Barnett Shale natural gas field, has been leased to drilling companies. Neighborhoods have begun banding together to negotiate ever-more-lucrative deals. In some residential areas, homeowners are earning $25,000 an acre in upfront bonuses, and 25 percent royalties on gas production.

Until 2006, Fort Worth had a 600-foot limit between gas wells and "protected land uses" — homes, churches, parks schools and hospitals, Assistant City Attorney Sarah Fullenwider said. Companies could drill closer if they got a waiver from the council, but only a few were granted.
The city was considering lowering the limit to 300 feet in 2006. But a fatal gas well accident happened in Forest Hill, just outside Fort Worth, in April 2006, just as a city task force was debating the new limit. Four days after the accident, Mayor Mike Moncrief called for a 600-foot limit. Moncrief and others have since said they were discussing the extended limit even before the accident.

As a compromise, the city allowed companies to drill within 200 feet of protected land uses — if they got written waivers from all the landowners within 600 feet of the wellhead or permission from the council.

A sampling of other Tarrant County cities found that some, including Bedford and Richland Hills, don’t allow waivers from their distance limits. North Richland Hills requires drillers who want a waiver to go before an appeals board. Arlington and Hurst allow variances from their distance setbacks, but they have to be approved by the City Council. Euless does the same, but requires a supermajority vote from the City Council.

Waiver problems?
Neighborhood groups didn’t like the waiver system from the beginning. They’ve said that it allows companies to essentially buy their way to a permit, and that it puts neighborhoods at the mercy of absentee landowners.
That’s the case on Scott Avenue in east Fort Worth, where Chesapeake has applied for a permit to drill next to the Tandy Hills Nature Center, according to nearby resident Mike Phipps. Chesapeake has received a waiver from one landowner at the end of the street, the only one within the distance limit. But the trucks serving the drill site will affect every resident for three blocks.

Jim Bradbury, a lawyer who sits on the Fort Worth gas drilling task force, said at a recent meeting there’s another flaw in the waiver system. The ordinance doesn’t classify apartments as homes. So when Chesapeake asked for a permit last month to drill a high-impact well on Oak Grove Road, the company had to get permission from the City Council, because of the site’s proximity to an undeveloped park. But the dozens of apartments just across the street from the site weren’t taken into account until Councilwoman Kathleen Hicks asked about them.
The proposed well site is on a large vacant tract; the City Council delayed a vote on the permit to give Chesapeake time to see if there’s a way to reposition the well, farther away from the apartments.

Much to lose ?
Proponents say high-impact permits are going to become more common, if people are to receive the money they expect from their mineral rights. And the gas companies have invested millions of dollars in setting up those leases.
On the same night that Crestwood residents were opposing the permit in their neighborhood, a couple of dozen residents in Highland Hills were asking for a high-impact permit near their neighborhood, which is near Oak Grove Road and Interstate 20 in south Fort Worth. Highland Hills residents signed their leases around 2005, earlier than other neighborhoods, and many residents received only a $200 bonus for a residential lot.
"Highland Hills got the short end of the stick when it came to gas-lease bonuses," said neighborhood leader Eunice Givens. "We told them to make it up with the royalties. We are in support of this [permit]."

Spokeswomen for XTO and Devon declined to comment on the permit system.
Chesapeake spokeswoman Jerri Robbins said via e-mail that waivers will continue to be necessary if inner-city residents are going to get the money they’ve been promised for the natural gas beneath their land.
"Yes, we can safely say Chesapeake has much to lose, as we have spent millions of dollars obtaining mineral leases in order to produce the minerals of lessors from contiguous parcels of land," Robbins wrote. "But we are not the only ones losing — future royalty owners will never receive their royalty checks if we are not able to drill, our nation loses an important energy source, and the city loses millions in tax revenue."

What’s the rush ?
Paul Roach, a frequent Trinity River trail user, said some areas of the city have to be preserved, even if there’s an economic downside.
There’s a bench dedicated to his late wife along the trail near the Crestwood site, and Roach has collected 300 signatures on a petition opposing the permit.
Up to now, most of the discussion about the site has dealt with the truck route. Roach said he’s concerned about the impact on the 100-year-old trees along the river, which are home to hawks and other wildlife.
If the city were to turn down the permit, Chesapeake might still be able to drill at the site in the future, as technology improves, he said.
"They’re drilling further and further now, what’s the rush here?" he asked.
"We’re going to have to come to the understanding that there are there some places in our city where it’s inappropriate and the impact just too high for us to drill."

Staff writers Jessica DeLeon, Susan Schrock and Adrienne Nettles contributed to this report. MIKE LEE, 817-390-7539