Feb 12, 2009
Response to Comments on Fort Worth Real Estate Blog
It looks like someone over at the Fort Worth Real Estate Blog has some issues with W&C. Methinks maybe they have issues with our commenters and maybe can’t tell the difference between editorial content and comments.
Anyway, here’s a comment that I wanted to leave (but couldn’t, due to their commenting system being hosed up) in response to their most recent post about something they didn’t like on W&C — something that I think they’re misinterpreting or reading into Steve’s post on injection wells.
I’m sorry if you think that we at West and Clear are ungrateful for any kind of commercial investment in Fort Worth. I can assure you that exactly the opposite is true — we want Fort Worth to succeed and grow, but we want it to be smart and reasoned growth, taking into account more than just the financial benefits.
I’m not interested in rebutting your comments point by point, except to say this:
If you only look at Barnett Shale activity from the economic perspective, then yes, it has certainly been a good thing in the short term. But the true leaders in this City should be looking at the LONG term and how ALL of the drilling activities will affect things. It’s unacceptable to just push risks off onto future generations so that we (by “we” I mean a small number of people, myself included) can make a few bucks today. What happens when all those wells are drilled and the thousands of jobs are gone, off to another “play”? The same thing that happened to places like Ranger and countless other towns in West and central Texas that prospered during the oil boom in the early 20th Century, albeit on a smaller scale. The Barnett Shale may be tiding us over during the greater economic downturn, but is it preparing us for the coming rebound? I don’t think so.
Pete, you are absolutely correct. We do need to make sure that natural gas development is done as reasonably and responsibly as possible. I do not think that we should have disposal wells in the city.
I do believe that the state and the industry do fairly reasonable jobs of regulating urban development. The Barnett just seems to be the favorite kicking boy in a lot of circles. It has also spawned a handful of fairly egregious activists locally.
I will clean up my post a bit. I enjoy W&C.
[...] I pile on, adding my voice to Pete Wann at Cowtown Chronicles, questioning their [...]
Thanks for the kind comment about W&C. We have no doubt that not every bit of our content will appeal to every person who reads it, and I hope we’ve done a decent job of welcoming differing opinions.
Unfortunately, it’s hard for me to make the same kind of statement about “…the state and the industry…” doing a reasonable job of regulating urban NG development when both entities are so secretive about (and stand to profit so handsomely from) everything they do.
Americans have been burned too many times by companies that operate within the law but WAY outside what is ethical or fair. I think a healthy skepticism is a perfectly natural reaction to assurances of safety and concern from people who stand to make billions of dollars. Particularly when those people can make even more money by externalizing the costs of dealing with the problems their activities create, which is exactly the case with NG developers in Fort Worth. Chesapeake (for example) won’t be around to deal with any problems with our drinking water due to injection wells 20 or 50 years from now — they’ll be off somewhere else the second the Barnett Shale dries up, leaving the taxpayers stuck with the bill.
Compound this natural tendency of corporations to externalize every possible cost of production with a “regulatory agency” that not only employs and is run by elected officials who have always worked for those same corporations (that old “revolving door” again), but is also tasked with “…research & education to promote the use of LP-gas as an alternative fuel”, and now you’ve got even more reason to be doubtful of the claims made by NG producers.
Now, I’m enough of an optimist to hope that no one would be crass enough to deliberately poison hundreds of thousands of people, but I also know that no one person makes decisions in a corporation, and that all too many times common sense and decency have lost out to the profit motive.
Lastly, you’d be hard pressed to find a city government anywhere that wouldn’t want more input into the management of their jurisdiction. More specifically, I suspect that members of the City management would agree that they need more say (they have none now) about whether or not to allow disposal wells within the city limits.
I also agree that the tone coming from the opposition has become increasingly shrill. It tires me, too.
[...] appears I touched some nerves on the Blagosphere. I have to admit that singling out W&C wasn’t necessarily appropriate. I enjoy the blog, [...]
The cities absolutely deserve a say in positioning of any heavy industrial activity within their boundaries. And they have that in the form of the permitting process. Mansfield is moving toward becoming fairly restrictive. Grand Prairie has taken some interesting steps. And Fort Worth has denied several locations.
There are other concerns also, like road use, which the cities have really held their ground on. Arguably to ends that are unmatched in other areas like construction (where similarly heavy vehicles are used). I don’t know how secretive anyone is. The processes are all public record and held mostly in public forums. The frustration more probably lies in individuals feelings of having no say, or impact.
I would also point out that there are several companies headquartered in Fort Worth, with executive structure living here, employing thousands of locals. This certainly heightens an emphasis on good will.
When it comes to water issues, our tables and aquifers are exceptionally permeable entities. Sometimes to the ability of being able to travel over large swaths of the nation. All that we can do is trust the disposal to be regulated to the safest depths we understand. Issues such as these crop up in all of industry (some of which may simply dump to surface reservoirs). No doubt though that strides have been made in purification, desalinization, and ozonafication (an interesting process which uses artificial ozone to purify water).
It really is a very interesting topic, with endless amounts of variables which can be discussed intelligently. For instance, while most people may not realize that because a mineral estate is dominant in Texas, a municipality may have relatively little recourse. This is because a mineral owner has an inherent and overriding right to access and develop their mineral estate. Denying them the right to do so may mean litigation for a city.
I doubt you’d find any outside observer who’d say that the permitting process is not completely in favor of gas drillers, especially since — as you mention later — the mineral estate trumps surface rights. The threat of a lawsuit in these tough economic times is often enough to cause city governments to give up the fight, no matter how worthy the fight is.
The process of re-evaluating the city’s current gas-drilling ordinance was NOT public, and the task force opted to keep their meetings off the public record by not publishing minutes. That sounds pretty secretive to me. Regardless of the “openness” of that particular process, how fair was it? The Task force was heavily stacked with gas company flacks and (again) people who stand to profit handsomely.
There’s no doubt that the locally based companies have much better reputations and have faced MUCH less public outrage when compared to the out-of-towners like Chesapeake. They’ve also been (intentionally or not) less aggressive in pursuing leases and well sites in highly sensitive areas like down-fucking-town, immediately next to one of the most used and loved recreation trails in the city, and in our city parks, etc. I hope that’s because the leaders of companies like XTO know that they have to face their friends and neighbors after making their business decisions, but then, I usually expect people to do the right thing, which is why I’m so disappointed when they don’t.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at with the aquifers. Are you suggesting that if they get polluted we’ll be able to find other sources of water via these new methods? What about the impact that the extraction and pollution (with a long list of still unidentified substances) of water from both our aquifers and waterways for fracing wells? How are we going to replace that water? Everyone focuses on the output end, assuming that natural resources (water in this example) are limitless, when that’s no where near the case.
And finally in the last paragraph of your comment, you contradict what you said in the first. If the mineral estate is dominant, then basically the surface users have no say in how the surface is used if a mineral owner wants to develop their minerals, otherwise everybody and their city councilman will be sued.
I’m sorry, but that attitude and legal framework just doesn’t work in a civil society. The libertarian hallucination (and apparently Texan ideal) that every man is an island is just that — fantasyland. Everyone’s actions affect everyone else in some way. Long ago, we could expect people to behave civilly because PEOPLE knew each other and had to interact with each other and live with the consequences of their business decisions.
That’s not the case anymore. Today, someone in OKC looks at a topographical mineral map and says “There’s good shale here, drill there” and the shareholders expect it to happen, or they’ll sue. Since the company can’t afford to get sued by shareholders and has to not only turn a profit, but GROW every quarter, they work their asses off to make it happen, even if that means bullying old ladies who can’t afford attorneys (who all know they’d lose anyway due to Texas’ backward-ass laws) and drilling in cemeteries, city parks, DOWN-FUCKING-TOWN!, wherever they have (or want) to, to pull the dino-farts from the ground. It’s insane, and my worst fear is that it’s all for naught.
We’re already seeing decreased investment in the Barnett Shale by NG developers. Many have announced reductions in the number of rigs and new wells because the price of NG has dropped so much, and again, the citizens of Fort Worth are stuck with the fallout from a white-hot 2 year boom which is rapidly turning into a bust that looks like it’ll take 6 months at the most.
I’m not opposed to NG exploration and development. I’m opposed to the arrogant, half-assed, “Drill at all costs” mentality that so many people in and around the business seem to have. Just because it’s there, doesn’t mean we have to go get it.
I wasn’t trying to suggest that we could purify our way into water sources. Although I suppose it is feasible, and may be necessary in the future. Instead I was attempting to suggest that we could purify resulting backflow water from the frac process (instead of just pumping wastewater into the ground).
You are correct that a surface owner has little say on stopping a mineral owner from developing… Within reason. So there has to be ample surface availability outside of existing uses (houses, structures). There is also something called the accommodation doctrine, which basically means “horizontal is possible and if it’s less intrusive, you should do that in lieu of crowding a surface estate just because you can”.
I have to say, I did think that the trinity trees location turned out fairly small. A relatively efficient use of the land. Mind you that was on private property which was zoned as heavy industrial as you can get. But I can understand some argument about pedestrian proximity in case of an accident. The big sign CHK stuck out there was pretty silly.
Permits are awarded by council members. Citizens have an outlet in that regard. On the flip side, I have seen cases where a city will deny a permit. Then citizens will petition city to allow drilling, and the city isn’t swayed at all by that.
The squeaky wheels tend to be those opposed, however, and are typically a minority.
If you think there are issues with representation in city government, I would say that we could extrapolate that to state and federal levels also. On the whole we seem to have become complacent as a society. The majority of people seem to simply accept that they have little influence. It’s kinda sad.
I fixed my comment plugin. The Spam was killing me.