Natural gas industry facing questions – and low prices
Woe the poor gas company. Life in the gas lane is not an easy one. Unforeseen problems are seen every day. The natural gas and oil industry is facing a number of challenges with new legislation being proposed in Washington. Budget proposals are calling for hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes and fees on domestic natural gas and oil producers.
In Fort Worth’s urban Barnett Shale field, the natives are restless. “How come you haven’t started a wellon my lease?” “Why are you trying to get the Council to let you drill your well 200 feet from my school?” There are myriad eminent domain problems involving pipeline routing. Litigation lawyers are beating the drums summoning mineral rights owners to a powwow. Lawsuits are being filed by unhappy half-acre city dwellers who waited too long to sign $25,000 an acre lease bonuses.
Environmental and ecological headaches galore. “Remember the 1937 New London school explosion!” Big trucks rumbling through quiet neighborhoods. Salt water disposal wells linked to earthquakes. Alarms of benzene, a known human carcinogen. And trees! “Gas man, spare that tree!” “I think that I shall never see a gas well lovely as a tree.” And injury added to insult – the most unkindest cut of all – gas prices plummeting from $13 to $2.50 per 1000 cubic feet.
More bad news. Not every company will win the Barnett Shale lottery and luck into a 15 million cubic feet per day bonanza. The Golden Goddess of the Oil Patch promises no gift-bearing suitor an iron orchard of producers. Many a hoped-for 15 million cubic feet per day sure thing founded on “can’t miss” geology dies like a dream dies at the opening day, great expectations gone aglimmering. Know this. The rest is lies. The only place that gas is absolutely sure to be found every time is in flabbergasting.
No matter the spurns and jilts of the Goddess, the veteran wildcatter, he of that happy breed of men, will skid his rig to a new location and dig again. Whence the bulldogged determination? Simple. The same “There’s gold in them thar hills!” lure that drove the 49ers to California a century and a half ago throbs in the wildcatter’s breast. This time not yellow gold but black gold! Or a Hope Diamond of a gasser!
An elusive dream? Perhaps. But who 25 years ago predicted that oil-dry Fort Worth, now with more than 2000 wells and counting, was destined to become the gas Spindletop of the nation? The Kelly is turning to the right. Let there be gas!
Don Woodard, Fort Worth businessman and frequent Business Press correspondent, is the author of Black Diamonds! Black Gold!: The Saga of the Texas Pacific Coal & Oil Company (Texas Tech University Press).
