Well, Well Neighbor
Fort Worth, Texas, has more than 1,000 wells, and they are being drilled downtown and right next to many homes.
FORT WORTH - Texas has a storied history of oil and gas production, but it has never experienced anything quite like the current urban gas boom in this city of 650,000 people.
More than 1,000 wells have been drilled inside Fort Worth's city limits in recent years. Drilling rigs have sprouted up downtown, next to homes, on universities, and at airports.
Wells have gone in near parks, schools, and reservoirs. If open land is unavailable, no problem: Gas operators have bought and demolished structures to make way for wells and pipelines.
"Texas - it's like drilling is second nature here," said Sarah J. Fullenwider, a senior assistant city attorney in Fort Worth. "But a lot of newcomers are not familiar with it, and when they're banging pipes at 3 a.m. near your house, it got a little closer to home."
The bonanza was triggered by the discovery of the Barnett Shale, a 7,000-foot-deep formation beneath 23 counties in North Texas, including all of Fort Worth. The Barnett is one of several shale-gas "plays" across the nation; the largest, the Marcellus Shale, underlies much of Pennsylvania.
While gas production is just beginning in the Marcellus, Barnett drilling began nearly 30 years ago. It took off in 2002, when engineers here combined horizontal drilling techniques with hydraulic fracturing, a process that unlocks natural gas by forcing high-pressure fluid and sand into the impermeable shale to shatter the rock.
With the new process, shale that had little economic allure began to yield prodigious amounts of fuel. Shale gas potential is so vast that forecasters are rethinking the nation's energy outlook.
According to the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the industry, about 13,000 wells have tapped into the Barnett - about 10 times the number in Pennsylvania's Marcellus since 2008.
According to the Perryman Group, an economic consultancy, the Barnett accounted for $11 billion in economic output and 111,131 jobs in 2008. Barnett activity accounts for 10.4 percent of private-sector employment in the Fort Worth area, according to Perryman.
Drilling activity has slacked off since it peaked in 2008 - there are now about 90 rigs operating in the shale, half the number from two years ago.
The state received more than $275 million in severance taxes from Barnett wells in 2008. The City of Fort Worth projects it will receive $1 billion in bonus and royalty revenue over the next three decades, plus an additional $400 million in production taxes.
But the bounty has costs.
Complaints about noise, dust, and traffic erupted after gas-drilling moved into congested areas. An industry accustomed to working in rural surroundings has been forced to become more neighborly.
The city enacted new ordinances with stricter setback standards - property owners within 600 feet of a well must sign a waiver to allow drilling, or the drilling company can request permission from city council.
The rules require rig operators to erect sound walls to tone down the around-the-clock racket during the weeks it takes to drill a well. Rubber pads were installed to reduce the clanging of steel pipes hitting the ground. Drillers were instructed to aim their lights away from dwellings.
Pipelines that cut through private property - the easements acquired under threat of condemnation - have triggered protests from residents worried about property values.
And a growing debate has emerged about emissions from wells and compressor stations, where the gas is processed before it is piped off to distant markets. After conflicting studies came to different conclusions about the threat of benzene emissions, Fort Worth is commissioning a study by a neutral firm that it hopes will clarify the issue.
Some of the initial euphoria from the boom, when property owners received big payments for leasing their rights, has turned to remorse.
"A lot of people here said they didn't realize the magnitude of what they were signing," said Fullenwider. "When the drilling started, people started having second thoughts."
The industry made some "very reckless and very stupid" missteps, said State Rep. Jim Keffer, a Republican who heads the Texas House Energy Resources Committee.
"You can't just come in and bully people around," said Keffer, who said the industry alienated a "widespread" cross-section of the public, from liberal Democrats to conservative Republicans.
Yet Keffer is reluctant to embrace stricter regulation for an industry that is the linchpin of the state's economy. "Nobody wants more laws, but we have to make sure the best practices are being followed," he said.
Gas operators acknowledge they've learned a lot about working in an urban environment. Each municipality has its own rules - and all of them seem to require attendance at multiple public hearings.
"I have to go through the same process over and over again, and get beat up every time," said Mike Middlebrook, vice president of North Texas operations for Range Resources Corp. "I've learned a lot about city government in the last two years."
Middlebrook said the company has quickly learned how to be more responsive to the public. Range has its headquarters in Fort Worth, and has about 350 wells in the Barnett. It is also one of the biggest operators in the Marcellus.
On a tour of one of the company's rigs, Middlebrook pointed out new houses where some neighbors had complained about noise. Range installed meters to verify the complaints.
Middlebrook noted that residents closer to the well site had not complained because they have an economic interest in drilling - they are part of the lease that will receive royalties from the well's production.
"They're not hearing anything," he said.
That's often the case in the oil and gas business - those who stand to gain financially often have a more positive view than those who are getting no direct benefits.
In Fort Worth and its suburbs - Tarrant County is home to 1.7 million people - the gas boom has revived long-standing conflicts over property rights.
In some subdivisions, where the developers retained mineral rights, homeowners only realized the implications of not owning their mineral rights when gas operators showed up to drill a well next door. In Texas, as in Pennsylvania, the owner of the mineral rights has access to the surface.
Curiously, one issue that has generated intense debate in Pennsylvania and New York - hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" - has sparked little controversy in Texas.
Despite the intensive fracking activity in the Barnett Shale, there have been no documented cases linking the practice to groundwater pollution, said Ramona Nye, a Railroad Commission spokeswoman. The Barnett shale is separated from groundwater by thousands of feet of impermeable rock, which prevents any migration, she said.
The Tarrant Regional Water District, which provides raw water to Fort Worth and other municipal systems from a network of reservoirs surrounded by thousands of wells - some only a few hundred feet away - says that the public drinking-water supplies are safe.
But some people are concerned.
"No one really knows what happens downhole when they do a frack," said Jim Bradbury, a Fort Worth attorney who has been active in shale issues.
Bradbury says the potential for conflicts is great in the city, where there are so many overlapping and conflicting interests. Drilling activity will only increase - most of the property in Fort Worth is leased, and operators have received 1,500 well permits in the city.
"Nobody has ever done this much drilling, of this type, so quickly," he said.
Contact staff writer Andrew Maykuth at 215-854-2947 or amaykuth@phillynews.com.
