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Posted: Dec 15, 2011 6:51 PM CST Updated: Dec 15, 2011 7:25 PM CST

By Theresa Schmidt

The Louisiana Oil and Gas industry is fighting back against claims fracking is a threat to drinking water. Hydraulic fracturing or fracking is a process used to get natural gas out of the ground.

It’s a hot button issue in many areas of the country and only recently here– since companies are buying up leases in Beauregard and Vernon parishes.

In Beauregard Parish, land owners have been approached by companies who want to lease their property to extract natural gas from the subsurface. It’s triggered an outcry from some about fracking– a process to get the gas out of the ground.

Citizens like Bonnie McElroy fear it could threaten groundwater supplies and the environment. ” They drill horizontally much deeper and they shoot thousands and thousands, over a million gallons of water mixed with toxic chemicals into the earth to cause the rocks to fracture. Then they get the gas. But the problem with that is, it has not proven itself environmentally safe in other areas.”

However, Don Briggs, who is the president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association says fracking is tried and true and safe and in no way threatens drinking water. Briggs said, “There is no reason to be concerned. We have been fracking since, the first well was actually in 1947. There is not one single proven case where hydraulic fracturing has in any way contaminated a water aquifer. And there’s a lot of misinformation and confusion about it.”

And concerning horror stories of communties in other states whose tap water can be set on fire, Briggs says it’s from naturally occurring methane– not fracking. “Both of those cases, when it was studied by other people going in there and investigating it, found out that it’s naturally occurring methane and does not have anything to do with hydraulic fracturing,” said Briggs.

As well,  this year there was what an in depth review of the state’s program for regulating fracking. It concludes the Louisiana program is overall well managed, professional and meets its objectives.

The Louisiana Hydraulic Fracturing State Review also makes recommendations for improvements in the program. The state has made a new rule requiring companies to identify chemicals in the fluids they use in the fracking process.

Original Article

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By Claire Taylor

Wednesday’s lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico, the first since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, shows the area remains attractive to oil and gas exploration companies interested in deepwater energy resources, two Louisiana industry group leaders said.

The U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on Wednesday opened 241 bids on 191 tracts totaling more than a million acres in the western Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Texas. Twenty companies submitted bids totaling more than $712 billion.

The $338 million in winning bids included the largest bid by ConocoPhillips at $103.2 million. The company submitted the apparent high bid on 75 blocks, the most of any company involved in Wednesday’s bidding.

“It’s a positive thing that there’s still a great deal of interest in exploring the deepwater Gulf of Mexico after the Macondo,” Don Briggs, president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, said.

BP submitted $27 million in high bids Wednesday. BP was operating the Deepwater Horizon platform in the Macondo Prospect of the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 when it exploded, killing 11 workers and spilling massive amounts of oil into the ocean.

The spill sparked a reorganization of the federal agency that overseas offshore oil and gas exploration, shut down drilling and exploration for months and resulted in tighter safety regulations on the industry.

The news wasn’t all good from Wednesday’s lease sale because fewer companies submitted bids than in the past, Briggs said. Twenty companies submitted bids Wednesday compared with 27 who participated in the 2009 sale and 47 who bid in 2008, he said.

Briggs attributed the “significant decline” in independent producers submitting bids on new, post-Deepwater Horizon regulations and interest in onshore drilling.

Chris John, president of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, said the sale results are impressive because of the competition for capital due to the recent emergency of shale plays across the U.S.

“We must recognize that today’s developments would not have been possible without the resilience of an industry that has invested millions in strengthening safety initiatives, and I am proud to be part of an industry with such a strong commitment to safe, responsible drilling,” John said in a news release.

While Wednesday’s sale involved leases off the Texas coast, Louisiana also will benefit, since it has the infrastructure that supports a majority of the Gulf of Mexico energy industry, Briggs said.

The oil and gas industry has a $77.3 billion impact on Louisiana and supports more than 300,000 jobs, John added.

U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu hailed the lease sale as “a long-awaited, much-anticipated step toward getting back to business.” But she also criticized the slow pace at which the federal government is approving new drilling permits since the Deepwater Horizon incident.

Other companies submitting high bids in Wednesday’s sale included Apache Corporation, Union Oil Company of California, Exxon Mobil, Shell Offshore, Plains Exploration and Tana Exploration.

Each bid now will undergo a strict evaluation process within BOEM before the lease is awarded.

Original Article

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By Richard Thompson

Environmental groups filed suit in federal court Tuesday to challenge the first oil and natural gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico since last year’s BP oil spill. The lawsuit was filed in District Court in Washington, D.C., by Oceana, Defenders of Wildlife, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Center for Biological Diversity.

The groups allege that the federal government is not prepared to handle a repeat of the April 2010 disaster that killed 11 rig workers and caused one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. In turn, the lawsuit seeks to nullify the results of the lease sale until regulators “take a hard look at the environmental impacts of its proposed decision” to move forward with additional offshore drilling, according to the filing.

The motion was filed the day before the long-planned western Gulf of Mexico lease sale, slated to be held in New Orleans. Up for grabs on Wednesday: 3,900 unleased tracts offshore, some located up to 250 miles off the coast of Texas, covering about 20.6 million acres overall.

Despite the legal wrangling, Melissa Schwartz, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which oversees offshore drilling, said the lease sale will go on as scheduled.

The sale attracted 241 bids from 20 companies on 191 tracts offshore Texas, compared to 189 bids submitted by 27 companies on 162 tracts during the previous western Gulf lease sale in August 2009, the agency said in a statement Tuesday.

Upwards of 423 million barrels of oil and 2.65 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could be produced as a result of the sale, according to agency figures.

Hanging in the balance is the fate of the lawsuit, which alleges that the agency is “continuing the same irresponsible approach that led to the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and harm still being felt in the Gulf,” Catherine Wannamaker, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, who represents the groups in court, said in a statement. “It’s easier for the government and oil companies to return to business as usual without considering the oil spill’s impacts on the Gulf, but it’s illegal and irresponsible.”

Jacqueline Savitz, senior campaign director for Oceana, said in a statement that the group had filed suit “to protect wildlife and ultimately, the fishing, recreation and tourism industries, rather than just selling out to ‘Big Oil.’”

“The administration has buried its head in the sand, ignoring the devastating impacts of the BP spill, and acting as if nothing ever happened,” Savitz said. “But the spill’s impacts on endangered and commercially important species must be considered.”

By moving ahead with the lease sale, the groups contend that the bureau has not incorporated lessons learned in the aftermath of the Macondo blowout and the months-long effort to stop the flow of oil from the gushing well.

Original Article

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EBR Staff Writer Published 13 December 2011

Indigo II Louisiana Operating has unveiled the test results of its first horizontal well targeting the Louisiana Eagle Ford Shale (LA Eagle Ford) formation resulting in a new oil discovery in Central Louisiana, US.

The Bentley Lumber 34H #1 located in Rapides Parish recently flowed at a rate of 543 barrels oil equivalent (80% oil) during a 24 hour test period.

This first LA Eagle Ford horizontal well in the region was successfully drilled without the need for an intermediate casing string through the shale interval.

In addition, it also involved a 15-stage fracture stimulation of the target interval.

The hydrocarbon mix is of 45 API gravity oil along with high liquid yield natural gas.

The oil is currently being trucked to sales and the gas is temporarily being flared with state approval.

Indigo II has assembled nearly 260,000 net acres in the LA Eagle Ford play and has identified several locations to drill additional horizontal wells in 2012.

Prior to drilling, it intends to secure a joint venture operating partner in early 2012 to bring horizontal oil expertise and capital to this large oil shale development project.

It is anticipated that 5 to 7 rigs could be operating in this emerging oil play during the 1st quarter of 2012.

Original Article

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On Thursday, December 8, 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recklessly reported that its investigation of groundwater in Pavillion, Wyoming, revealed chemicals associated with natural gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids.  The event marks the first time that the agency has implicated hydraulic fracturing as a direct cause for groundwater contamination.

Many questions have been raised regarding the methodology and science behind the EPA’s preliminary draft report, which was released before it had been properly peer-reviewed.  The following are some of the key issues with the federal agency’s data and analysis:

The EPA report ignores well-known historical realities with respect to the Pavillion field’s unique geology and hydrology.  Pavillion is a shallow natural gas field where naturally occurring methane exists throughout its subsurface geology.  Well before any natural gas drilling had taken place, the presence of natural gas has been commonly found in the area’s groundwater.
A USGS report conducted in 1959 documented Pavillion water as unsatisfactory for domestic use due to high concentrations of naturally occurring sulfate, total dissolved solids and pH levels which commonly exceed state and federal drinking water standards.
The EPA drilled two deep monitoring wells (depth range: 783 – 981 feet) into a natural gas reservoir and found components of natural gas, which is an entirely expected result. The results in the EPA deep wells are radically different than those in the domestic water wells (typically less than 300 feet deep), thereby showing no connection.
There is unacceptable inconsistency between EPA labs’ analysis for numerous organic compounds reported to have been found in the EPA deep monitoring wells.  The EPA’s conclusions are based on a mere four samples collected over the last two years.  Evidence proves that different labs reported different results in analyzing these samples.  In one lab, “blank” clean samples used for comparison were reported as contaminated, which raises serious questions about the credibility of the examination.
Several of the man-made chemicals detected in the EPA deep wells have never been detected in any of the other wells sampled. They were, however, detected in many of the quality control samples – which are ultra purified water samples commonly used in testing to ensure no contamination from field sampling procedures. These two observations suggest a more likely connection to what it found is due to the problems associated with EPA methodology in the drilling and sampling of these two wells.
The EPA’s reported results of all four phases of its domestic water well tests do not exceed federal or state drinking water quality standards for any constituent related to oil and gas development.
The EPA’s preliminary report contradicts the agency’s previous statements on hydraulic fracturing.  At a U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing in May 2011, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson stated, “I’m not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.”

In its 2004 study, the EPA found that the hydraulic fracturing process poses no discernable risk to fresh water aquifers.  There is no question that the current leadership within the agency is politically, not scientifically, driven to hamper the safe and responsible extraction of U.S. natural gas resources.

Hydraulic fracturing is key to unlocking our nation’s energy future, and the EPA’s recent report findings fly in the face of decades of responsible drilling.  For more than sixty years, America’s energy producers have relied on the process of hydraulic fracturing to enhance the production of oil and natural gas.  Hydraulic fracturing was first utilized in 1947, and by 1988, the practice had already been employed nearly one million times.  According to the National Petroleum Council, 60% to 80% of all wells drilled in the United States in the next decade will require fracturing to remain viable.

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East Carroll Parish could benefit from natural gas strike

East Carroll Parish has had more than its share of dry holes during the past 40 years.

Once a thriving rural showplace, East Carroll hit rock bottom in the 1990s when parish seat Lake Providence was declared the poorest place in America by Time magazine and 20 arson fires within a month scorched the town during the summer of 1995.

East Carroll remains the poorest parish in Louisiana. Almost half of its residents live below the poverty line with few local opportunities to pull themselves up.

The place needs a gusher, and Louisiana Department of Natural Resources Secretary Scott Angelle said a relatively sudden surge of mineral leasing there could bring new prosperity to the parish.

Angelle said more than 6,000 acres of state-owned land in East Carroll was leased this fall in connection with what is referred to as the “Brown Dense” or “Lower Smackover” prospect. That’s believed to be a layer of limestone at the base of the Smackover Formation, a well-known formation that has long been a source for oil and natural gas.

“A lot of work remains in permitting, testing and drilling before anyone can estimate how successful this play will be or how much will be invested there,” Angelle said. “However, the level of interest brings the potential for new economic activity, both in jobs and companies directly tied to exploration and in possible new spending, creating business and job opportunities in an area that has battled one of the highest poverty rates in the nation for decades.”

Residents who are aware of the leasing activity are hopeful in one breath, but cautious in the next. They’re used to disappointment.

East Carroll has hosted little energy exploration in its history, with about 125 wells drilled for oil or natural gas. Louisiana Office of Conservation records show the last 30-plus wells drilled since 1981 were dry holes.

“It would just be phenomenal if it happened,” said Reynold Minsky, who owns a business in Lake Providence and is president of the 5th Louisiana Levee District Board. “This little city could be something again instead of just a trash dump. … But we don’t get our hopes too high around here.”

Still, during the state’s October lease sale, which generated more than

$1.8 million in lease bonuses, two bidders were competing for the leasing rights, and the per-acre price of $300-plus was on level with some of the stronger lease bonus offers almost anywhere else in the state.

The only exception is the Haynesville Shale area of northwestern Louisiana, where activity has exploded since 2008 and 2009.

Ed Patrick, an East Carroll farmer and a director of the Louisiana Land Bank, said his family is among landowners who have leased mineral rights during the past year, though not close to $300 per acre.

“Maybe this will turn into something, but they’ll have to start punching some holes before it makes any widespread difference in people’s lives here,” he said. “The real activity will be if they begin drilling and find something. Then those with 10 or 15 acres can get some real money, and the jobs and money connected with drilling will help even those who don’t own land.”

Patrick said he is only slightly familiar with impact of the Haynesville Shale on northwestern Louisiana and only because of his involvement with the Land Bank.

“I know a bunch of folks got rich, and we (the Land Bank) had a lot of payoffs over there,” he said.

Angelle said private interests have nominated an additional 3,000-plus acres of state-owned water bottoms centering on the southwest quarter of East Carroll Parish for bid in the December state mineral lease sale.

The area encompasses almost all of the state-owned water bottoms in that area of the parish and touches on neighboring areas of West Carroll and Richland parishes, as well as the eastern border of East Carroll.

If the Brown Dense formation is to be tapped, it will likely be done through horizontal rather than traditional vertical wells.

“When the Haynesville Shale boom came to northwest Louisiana, it made an incredible positive economic impact on an area that already had a strong economy,” Angelle said. “Responsible exploration of this new prospect, even if it does not reach the same fever pitch, could mean a welcome strengthening of the northeast Louisiana economy and greater opportunities for businesses and jobs.”

Original Article