Patricia Bullard stands near a natural-gas well on her 2,000-acre ranch near Aledo, Texas. She is one of thousands of Fort Worth–area homeowners who collect monthly checks from energy companies drilling into their land above one of the nation's hottest-producing natural gas fields, the Barnett Shale
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But it's not all bad news for energy companies, West says. Obtaining urban leases, particularly for horizontal wells that can radiate several thousand feet, often involves negotiating with numerous landowners. Working with a coalition of property owners can cut a company's landmen costs, West says.
As rigs pop up from the heart of downtown to suburban ranch-style homes out on the prairie, blogs and websites have matched the pace. The Fort Worth League of Neighborhood Associations (www.fwlna.org) serves as a clearinghouse for neighborhood leasing information. Individual neighborhood associations, small-town newspaper websites and Web activists both pro and con are also proliferating. The website BarnettShaleNews.com, run by Gene Powell, serves as a combination Drudge Report and market watch, compiling a weekly service of shale news with downloadable Excel spreadsheets and charts — some free, others only by subscription — on the going rates for leases. Signing bonuses have reached as high as $25,000 per homeowner with royalties expected to bring in conservatively $20,000 to $30,000 over a 20-year period in some cases.
"I have never seen an issue that brings out people to neighborhood meetings like this," says West, who briefs the groups on the legal intricacies of mineral rights. Zoning or crime issues might bring out a small group to a neighborhood meeting, but mention the Barnett Shale and hundreds show up, West says. Neighborhood association secretaries post the latest on contract negotiations between runs to soccer practice and summer swimming lessons, and yard signs urging neighbors to sign or resist drilling are everywhere.
Stamets jokes that members and visitors to the sites fall into three categories: "NIMBYs" (not in my backyard), "HIMBYs" (here in my backyard) and "BANANAS" (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone).
There are a significant number of bananas. Don Young went from being a full-time glass artist to spending 50% of his working hours battling the energy companies via his website, FWcando.org (Fort Worth Citizens Against Drilling Ordinance). He first became alarmed at the exploration boom when a prairie reserve near his old, cherished Fort Worth neighborhood was threatened. He began the fight by printing flyers and distributing them to his neighbors, but he soon set up a website to keep the information flowing. It has not only been a clearinghouse for Fort Worth residents concerned about the impact of backyard gas wells, but it also attracts daily e-mail messages from groups across the country, Young says. His site links to other anti-drilling advocates from New Mexico and Wyoming to Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Michigan.
Young says some of his neighbors are attracted by the sort of Texas mythology that is woven into Fort Worth's cultural history, including legends portrayed in movies like Giant with the brooding poor ranch hand played by James Dean turning into a plutocratic wildcatter. But Young and other opponents insist the real Texas — the city's old neighborhoods and tree-lined trails, plus the rolling prairie lands and nearby small towns — are threatened. "The oil companies are acting like it's West Texas here, but it's not," Young says. "We're trying to put a brake on things."
For him the fight is personal, sometimes sadly pitting neighbor against neighbor. Young has turned down a $25,000 signing bonus offered for his own land. With daily headlines proclaiming new exploration moves, Young is now committed to focusing his neighbors' attentions on the impact that the accompanying pipelines and service roads will have. Says Young: "The war is not won by them or lost by us ... yet."