Published on:

By

Gasland is a film documentary about the dangers caused by hydraulic fracturing of gas wells being drilled in shale plays across the U.S. It won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival this year. It was filmed by Josh Fox, whose family owns land in Pennsylvania that is in the Marcellus Shale Play. Gasland is now being screened across the country.

Josh Fox was recently interviewed about his film on the PBS program NOW. The film asserts that frac’ing of wells has caused underground aquifers to be charged with methane in Pennsylvania and Colorado and poses severe risks of contamination to the water supply. Josh Fox notes that hydraulic fracturing is exempt from federal regulation, and he advocates for passage of the FRAC Act now before Congress that would give the EPA jurisdiction over hydraulic fracturing.

The comments about the NOW story posted on its website evidence the growing controversy over frac’ing.

 

Continue reading →

Published on:

By

Newfield Exploration has reported that it is drilling horizontal wells with “super extended laterals” in the Woodford Shale in Oklahoma — wells with laterals exceeding 5,000 feet. Newfield has so far drilled 14 super-extended lateral wells, with an average length of 9,000 feet. Those wells had an average gross initial production rate of approximately 9 MMcfe/day.

ConocoPhillips reported that it has completed the drilling of four horizontal wells in the Eagle Ford shale play, in its “liquids-rich” core. The first of these wells was put on production in March and flowed at an initial rate of 3.8 mmcf/day and 1,200 barrels/day of condensate.

All of the new shale gas production continues to put downward pressure on gas prices. Natural gas futures for June delivery fell 36.8 cents, or 8.5 percent on Thursday, April 29 on NYMEX. So far this year, natural gas futures have fallen 29 percent. The Energy Information Administration reported that the supply of gas in storage increased  by 83 Bcf for the week ended April 30. Gas in storage is 315 Bcf above the 5-year average.

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

The Park Foundation has submitted a resolution for consideration at ExxonMobil’s annual meeting urging ExxonMobil to prepare a report on the environmental impact of fracturing operations and what can be done to reduce or eliminate environmental hazards caused by hydraulic fracturing.  The proposal, and ExxonMobil’s response, provide a good summary of the state of the debate in the U.S. over potential environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing. I have reproduced the entire statement from Exxon’s proxy statement below.

Continue reading →

Published on:

By

An interesting article by Joe Carroll of Bloomberg News explores the problems faced by South Texas Ranchers seeking to require cleanup of old oilfield contamination. These problems are widespread in Texas and in my opinion the Texas Railroad Commission is ill equipped to address the problems.

Published on:

By

An interesting case has recently been filed in Louisiana challenging the authority of the Louisiana Department of Conservation to approve pooled units containing multiple wells. In Gatti et al. vs. State of Louisiana, et al., Number 589350, Division 23, filed in the 19th Judicial District Court in East Baton Rouge Parish, the plaintiffs sued the State Department of Conservation and several operators in the Haynesville field, including Chesapake, Encana, Exco, Conoco Phillips, Petrohawk, SWEPI, EOG, Questar, Forest and XTO, claiming that the Department of Conservation was routinely allowing the drilling of “alternate unit wells” on previously established units, in violation of Louisiana law. A copy of the petition may be found here. 

Gatti v. St of Louisiana.pdf.

Louisiana has a forced-pooling statute that allows an operator to propose to the Department of Conservation a unit for a well which, if approved, forces all mineral owners in the unit to pool their interests for the drilling and production of that well. According to the plaintiffs, this statute only authorizes the Department to approve units large enough to cover an area drained by one well. The practice in Lousiana for the Cotton Valley and Haynesville fields is to obtain orders for 640-acre units, and later obtain approval to drill additoinal “alternate unit wells” on those units. The suit contends that this practice is unfair to the owners of minerals and royalties in the unit, and violates state law. The suit seeks certification of a class action on behalf of all owners of mineral rights in Haynesville Zone in Louisiana. It seeks a declaration that the Department has no authority to establish a unit having an area in excess of the area drainable by one well, and that any such unit is “null and void.” The suit also seeks unspecified damages against the defendant companies.

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

The Bureau of Land Management has signed a settlement agreement in which it agreed to “suspend” oil and gas leases covering BLM lands in Montana until it has completed a review of the effect of oil and gas development on greenhouse gas emissions.

The settlement was entered in Montana Environmental Information Center, et al. v. United States Bureau of Land Management, Case No. 08-178-M-DWM, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, Missoula Division, on March 11, 2010. The case was brought by citizens groups who contended that federal law required the BLM to consider the cumulative impacts of oil and gas development on the environment, and specifically the greenhouse gas emissions caused by oil and gas well drilling and production, before granting oil and gas leases on lands in Montana.

The plaintiffs’ petition contains some interesting facts:

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the Energy Information Administration will revise the way it estimates U.S. natural gas supplies, after concluding that its current method significantly over-estimates supply. An analysis has concluded that there are discrepancies of as much as 12% between the total gas supply (gas produced or imported) and gas demand (gas consumed or stored). In December, the EIA reported gas supply at 87.8 bcf/day and total demand of 80 bcf/day. The high estimates for supply may have unnecessarily depressed prices.

The EIA requires the nation’s largest producers to file a monthly report, Form 914, to report production; based on that report and its models, EIA estimates production by smaller producers. EIA has been less able to account for smaller companies’ production, and it is believed that this is in part a result of shale development and other advances in technology.

Published on:

By

Speaker of the House Joe Strauss has charged the House Committee on Energy Resources as follows for the next legislative session:

“Survey current local ordinances governing surface use of property in oil and gas development. Recommend changes, if any, to the authority of the Railroad Commission to regulate the operation of oil and gas industries in urban areas of the state, particularly the Barnett Shale.”

It seems evident from this charge that operators in the Barnett Shale will be asking the Texas Legislature to curtail the authority of municipalities to issue drilling permits for areas within their jurisdiction, or at least to limit what conditions they can place in those permits. Drilling ordinances such as those in Fort Worth and surrounding cities are becoming quite sophisticated, and place significant conditions on the granting of permits, including distances from houses and other structures, sound limits, handling of frac water, produced water and other wastes, safety requirements, traffic, and damage to surrounding streets. The City of Grapevine has revised its drilling ordinance to require an 8-foot masonry wall around the wellsite and shrubbery between 3 and 5 feet high along the wall. The City of Flower Mound is considering revision of its drilling ordinance to require companies to report their airbrorne emissions and use vapor recovery technology. In some cases, municipal ordinances are so stringent that as a practical matter they prevent drilling within city limits. I expect that eventually constitutional takings claims will be made against cities whose restrictions prevent any mineral development within their limits.

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

In a previous post I reported on the application of Devon Energy asking the Texas Railroad Commission to include in the new Field Rules for the Carthage (Haynesville Shale) Field a provision allowing it to drill horizontal wells across lease or pooled unit boundaries.  These new rules apply to wells drilled in the Haynesville and Bossier formations in Harrison, Nacogdoches, Panola, Shelby and Rusk Counties in East Texas. Devon asked that the rules provide what it calls a “default allocation method” for horizontal wells drilled across unit boundaries.The rule proposed by Devon reads as follows:

“Operators shall be permitted to drill and complete horizontal wells that traverse one or more units and/or leases as long as that operator has a lease or other mineral ownership right to produce from each such unit or lease. If such a well is not already subject to an agreement regarding the allocation of production, the following allocation formula will be presumed to constitute a fair and reasonable allocation of production from a well in this field and shall be utilized by the Commission in assigning acreage attributable to the separate units/leases traversed by the horizontal drainhole: an allocation of acreage and production to each of the units and/or leases traversed by and completed in the horizontal well based on the percent of said horizontal well from first take point to last take point that lies under each unit or lease.”

The Commission concluded that it had no authority to adopt such a rule, because pooling is a contractual issue between private parties, and (except as provided in the Mineral Interest Pooling Act) the Commission has no right to impose allocations of production among different tracts penetrated by a horizontal well.

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

Chesapeake Energy Corporation summarized its activities in the country’s “Big 6” shale plays in its Operational Update issued on February 16. The report reveals the huge impact Chesapeake has had on shale plays from New York to South Texas.

Chesapeake is the eighth largest E&P company ranked by total assets according to the Oil & Gas Financial Journal, behind ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Anadarko, Marathon, Occidental and XTO Energy. It also ranks eighth in exploratory spending and market capitalization, and twelfth in total revenue. (Chesapeake’s market cap is 18% of ExxonMobil’s.) In 2009, Chesapeake drilled 1,148 gross operated wells, which it called “the industry’s most active drilling program,” spending $2.941 billion. Its leashold inventory at the end of 2009 was 13.7 million net acres.

Here are some highlights from Chesapeake’s report:

 

Continue reading →

Contact Information
John McFarland
 Graves, Dougherty, Hearon & Moody, P.C.
401 Congress Avenue, Suite 2700
Austin, Texas 78701
Phone: 512-480-5618
This Blog/Web Site is made available for educational purposes only as well as to give general information and a general understanding of the law, not to provide specific legal advice. By using this blog site you understand that there is no attorney client relationship between you and the publisher. The Blog/Web Site should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in your state.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Please do not include any confidential or sensitive information in a contact form, text message, or voicemail. The contact form sends information by non-encrypted email, which is not secure. Submitting a contact form, sending a text message, making a phone call, or leaving a voicemail does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Copyright © 2015 – 2025, John McFarland
JUSTIA Law Firm Blog Design