Denton residents start petition to ban fracking in the city

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Efforts to support the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing could come to a head in the General Assembly.

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Nicholas Sakelaris

Staff Writer- Dallas Business Journal

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Denton residents will start collecting signatures for a petition to ban hydraulic fracturing in the city on Thursday, a strong move by anti-drilling groups who say they are done trying to negotiate drilling regulations at the city level.

The initiative needs 571 signatures within 180 days to be considered a valid petition, a number that’s based on the turnout of the last municipal election in May.

“There’s so many people who are affected by this,” said Cathy McMullen, with the Denton Drilling Awareness Group. “There’s no doubt in my mind we’re going to get the signatures for that.”

The group will start with a rally at the Sweetwater Grill & Tavern, 115 S. Elm St. in Denton on Thursday. 

If successful, the Denton City Council would have two options: Approve the fracking ban or put it on the ballot at the next opportunity, likely in November.

Over the past decade, new residential development has popped up on the city’s southwest side. These homes are encroaching on old dormant, oil fields that are being given new life by using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to target the Barnett Shale. Small operators such as Eagle Ridge Energy, based in Dallas, are among the companies drilling there.

The noise, smells and panic caused by drilling a few hundred feet from homes drove residents like McMullen to pursue the ban. They’d tried to work with the city since 2010 to develop a stronger ordinance but the final product, McMullen says, is weaker than the city’s previous regulations.

“We are 100 times worse than before the ordinances were even passed,” she said.

If adopted, the ban affects not only future applications but those that have already been approved and have already started. 

Companies like Eagle Ridge Energy are “within their right” to drill there because these pad sites were permitted long ago when the Denton fire department granted permits and are grandfathered in, said Ed Ireland, executive director of the Barnett Shale Education Council.

“They don’t like that but not liking it doesn’t change the facts that Eagle Ridge has permits to do what they’re doing now,” Ireland said.

An outright ban on fracking would likely be a first for Texas, but it’s been done in cities in Colorado, for example, and in the state of New York,

“The Council would have to take a really close look at whether that’s something they can actually do as a municipality,” he said. “It looks like there’s a lot that’s wrong with the whole idea of banning hydraulic fracturing. Of course, no one would drill a Barnett Shale well without being able to fracture it.”

He added that there’s no scientific basis for banning a well completion technique, which is regulated by the Texas Railroad Commission.

Phone calls to Eagle Ridge Energy were not immediately returned.

The city of Dallas already learned this week what happens when a drilling company is denied the right to drill. Trinity East Energy, based in Fort Worth,  filed a lawsuit this week accusing Dallas of fraud and of condemning the oil and gas minerals that it planned to drill for on the city’s northwest side. Trinity East spent $19 million just to lease the minerals from the city of Dallas in 2008 and is seeking that and much more in damages. 

Nicholas covers the energy, manufacturing, aviation and transportation beats for the Dallas Business Journal. Subscribe the Energy Inc. newsletter