Shale issue could be divisive

Once again, outside interests are waving money in front of Big Bend citizens. And, once again it appears, folks out here will be divided on the issue.

We’ve had folks from all over the state, nation and world try to turn our unique and still-somewhat-pristine part of the world into (a) a nuclear dump; (b) a trash compactor for Northeast cities; (c) a truck megalopolis; and (d) a border war zone.

Big Bend citizens and community leaders have fought hard against each intrusion. In fact, you could make a case that the Big Bend has more than held its own in all but the border war - and that’s something for which no one understands or has an answer.

Now, another threat looms, one that could be the most divisive of all because it should involve big money, and potential long-term solutions to U.S. energy needs. Staying true to the Last Frontier mystique becomes difficult when faced with those factors.

So, who’s the culprit?

Shale, plain old shale.

The Barnett Shale formation stretches through North and Central Texas. And, apparently, shale deposits slice through pieces of Far West Texas.

Already, the Avalanche and other area newspapers have been told, property owners in the Balmorhea area have been approached about leases aimed at drilling for natural gas.

Elizabeth Jones, a member of the Texas Railroad Commission, writing recently in the Wall Street Journal, said: “In the 1980s, Houston wildcatter George Mitchell drilled the first well into the Barnett Shale formation that stretches through north and central Texas. He tapped into what would turn out to be one of the largest onshore natural gas reserves in the United States.”

When you think about it, those are pretty bold statements, high-impact statements that portend great returns for many people. What has not been discussed - by Jones or other state officials - is potential effects on local people and local lifestyles.

Existing lifestyle and environmental concerns vs. national energy supplies and prices, plus profits for landowners.

Yes, Far West Texans are about to enter a debate full of grays. If you’re looking for bad guys, you won’t find any in these debates; if you looking for nuance and point of view, you’ll find plenty.

On the one hand, oil and natural gas drilling - and, most importantly, discovery - could bring healthy injections of money into local economies and local tax bases.

On the other hand, the long-term effects on the land and its inhabitants have not been addressed. For instance, what will natural gas drilling do to the springs that feed Balmorhea State Park? And what would the loss of those springs mean to us?

That’s not to say that natural gas drilling will even affect the springs, but the questions must be asked. After all, you only have to look at what happened to the Fort Stockton area’s Comanche Springs to understand that the worst-case scenario is always possible.

[Another bias alert: I grew up in Odessa, worked in the oilfields and have the greatest admiration for the industry. That means I do not want to ignore what oil can do for Far West Texas’ economy; at the same time, I don’t want to see Alpine, Marfa and Fort Davis become mini-Odessas; Fort Stockton’s already done that.]

The Fort Worth story

Before we go much farther in our initial exploration of the issue, let’s look at what’s happened in Fort Worth over the past few years.

According to the state Railroad Commission, there are about 7,500 gas wells in the Barnett Shale, many located in the city limits of Fort Worth, and some a stone’s throw from suburban homes and schools.

Railroad Commissioner Elizabeth Jones takes the traditional Texas viewpoint: drill-or-be-damned stance, saying in the Wall Street Journal: “If there is an energy crisis in this country, it is because too many states and too many lawmakers in Washington are too timid about allowing entrepreneurs to bring to the surface what is buried right below us. In Texas, we’re not timid. …

“…[T]here is no better example of how Texas gets the balance right between energy and the environment than the development of the Barnett Shale. … [T]here is an estimated 27 trillion cubic feet of natural gas locked up in it. Americans use about 23 trillion cubic feet of natural gas a year; four trillion cubic feet a year are imported. So being able to tap into the Barnett is a big step toward producing all of the country’s natural gas needs domestically.”

Jones says it is not just the producers who are reaping the rewards. Dallas/Fort Worth Airport and many cities, including Fort Worth and Arlington, will be receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in lease bonuses and royalties from natural gas wells over the next 25 years.

Missives from Fort Davis

Bob Dillard, the editor and publisher of the Mountain Dispatch in Fort Davis, was the first Big Bend editor to write in any kind depth about what might happen in the Big Bend/Davis Mountains area.

In his July 17 story headlined “Oil Bidness moves closer and closer to mountains,” Dillard pondered what the threats would be if oil and gas wells proliferate throughout our region.

Kendall McCook, a Fort Worth resident who spends a lot of his time managing family property in Far West Texas, responded with a letter, a complete version of which appears on Page A5.

“As a resident of Tarrant County I have seen the first (and only) large-scale urban gas drilling operations within a city,” McCook said. “In 2005, the gas wells used 1 percent of the city’s water supply. Three years later that percentage has at least doubled with the influx of over 1,100 wells in neighborhoods all over town.

“North and west of Fort Worth, the story is the same,” he said. “Injection wells have ruined the landscape, and as the water table drops from overuse, domestic wells have gone dry. “

Barnett Shale gas drilling is relentless in its demands for water, McCook said. In a region like Central Texas, where lakes are many and rainfall generally plentiful - as compared to the semi-arid lands of the Trans-Pecos - water supplies are nonetheless being depleted, he said.

McCook also makes the Comanche Springs analogy: “When my great-grandfather Charlie Graef homesteaded in the Hovey community west of Fort Stockton in 1905, there were abundant springs flowing in both Pecos and Reeves counties. Comanche Springs rose out of the earth with such force that State Rep. Pete Gallego’s mother remembers riding on the bursts of water. Now, the springs have been dried by man’s depredations, including [pumping] the springs dry in order to raise cheap cotton. Now those waters are gone.”

Injection wells with 2.5 to 5 million gallons of contaminated wastewater now dot Reeves and Pecos counties, McCook said; Reeves County alone has over 600 wastewater injection wells.

But McCook brings more than criticism to the argument; he is proposing an alternative.

“A federally-funded restoration of the Balmorhea irrigation system would make small-farm organic agriculture not only sustainable but profitable,” he said. “Raising certified organic bean seed for the Santa Fe, New Mexico, company, Seeds of Change, can earn the farmer $3 a pound (the seeds sell in the Seeds of Change catalog for $3 an ounce, or $48 a pound).

“The Pecos Valley was once known as a vegetable faming region, and it can be again, if the waters are saved, if the land is enriched with crop rotation.”

The gospel according to shale

Writing in the Aug. 24 New York Times, Clifford Krauss said American natural gas production is rising at a clip not seen in half a century, pushing down prices of the fuel and reversing conventional wisdom that domestic gas fields were in irreversible decline.

The new drilling boom, he said, uses advanced technology to release gas trapped in huge shale beds found throughout North America — gas long believed to be out of reach. Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel, releasing fewer of the emissions that cause global warming than coal or oil.

Rising production of natural gas has significant long-range implications for American consumers and businesses. A sustained increase in gas supplies over the next decade could slow the rise of utility bills, obviate the need to import gas and make energy-intensive industries more competitive.

Competition among companies for rights to the new gas has set off a frenzy of leasing and drilling

We’ve seen that in Fort Worth, North Texas and Central Texas; it would seem we’re about to see that in Far West Texas.

“It’s almost divine intervention,” Aubrey K. McClendon, chairman and chief executive of Chesapeake Energy Corp., one of the nation’s largest natural gas producers, told the Times.

“Right at the time oil prices are skyrocketing, we’re struggling with the economy, we’re concerned about global warming, and national security threats remain intense, we wake up and we’ve got this abundance of natural gas around us.”

Senior Democrats in Congress are getting behind natural gas, portraying it as an alternative fuel for transportation that can serve as a stopgap until renewable sources of energy, like solar and wind power, become economical on a broad scale.

“You can have a transition with natural gas that is cheap, abundant and clean,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, said on “Meet the Press” last month.

She also said an investment that she and her husband had made in a company that produces natural gas for use in automobiles, revealed last week by the Wall Street Journal, was not a conflict of interest because “I’m investing in something I believe in.”

Most of the gain, news reports indicate, is coming from shale, particularly the Barnett Shale region around Fort Worth, which has been under development for several years.

The increase in gas production stands in sharp contrast to the trend in domestic oil production, which has been declining steadily since 1970 and dropped 21 percent in the last decade alone.

The Barnett region proved that, using new technology, shale gas could be extracted on a large scale. But lately, companies have set their sights on shale formations that could produce far more gas than the Barnett.

Testing to determine the productivity of fields has been completed on just a tiny fraction of the potential acreage, the Times story said, which explains the interest in Far West Texas.

According to a new report by Navigant Consulting, paid for by a foundation allied with the gas industry, there could be as much as 842 trillion cubic feet of retrievable gas in shales around the country, enough to supply about 40 years’ worth of natural gas, at today’s consumption rate.

But thousands of wells need to be drilled before the exact reserves will be known.

On the other hand, the Energy Department’s 2008 estimates for shale gas reserves that may one day be economically produced stand at 125 trillion cubic feet, about a seventh of the industry estimates.

(See sidebar stories in NEWS.)

Another train incident

On Saturday, Alpine residents came face-to-face with two important facts of life:

Rangra case expunged

An appeals court has expunged the judgments against Alpine City Councilman Avinash Rangra.

La Entrada meetings postponed

Avalanche staff

Shale issue could be divisive

Once again, outside interests are waving money in front of Big Bend citizens. And, once again it appears, folks out here will be divided on the issue.

Mois seeks to clear up confusion

Avalanche staff