Oil and natural gas industry leaders and Louisiana elected officials expressed frustration that a meeting with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar didn’t lead to more progress on easing restrictions on offshore drilling.

Salazar traveled to Louisiana on Monday to meet with offshore oil and natural gas drillers who’ve cried foul over new rules put in place by the Obama administration for the Gulf of Mexico since the BP PLC oil spill.

“If the regulators want to sit around and figure out what rules and regulations to come up with, if they wait much longer they won’t have much industry to regulate,” said James W. Noe, the head of the Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition, an industry group pushing to get the Obama administration to speed up permitting.

Salazar said he would continue working with the offshore drilling industry, but he stopped short of announcing any major breakthrough.

“We recognize that we have some difficult issues to work through,” Salazar said after meeting with industry leaders at an offshore platform building yard in Houma, a city southwest of New Orleans with deep ties to oil and gas drilling.

“There are new rules of the road, and the new rules of the road are taking some time to put into place,” Salazar said. “We are committed to oil and gas production down here … We’re going to do it in a way that is safe.”

Drillers argue that new safety and environmental rules announced in October have impeded new drilling in both shallow waters and deeper waters, threatening the industry’s future. The rules were put in place as a condition to lifting a moratorium on new deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that killed 11 crew members and led to the release of more than 200 million gallons of oil.

The new rules focus on making sure blowout preventers work properly. In the case of the BP explosion, the blowout preventer failed to shut off the leaking well as it was designed to. Also, the new rules require companies to be prepared for worst-case oil spill scenarios.

“We all came expecting, hoping, for a new policy decision, a breakthrough in terms of permitting, at least a new set of permits issued, and we heard none of that,” said U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., after meeting Salazar. “That was extremely disappointing … There is an enormous logjam in terms of permitting right now, so much so that it amounts to a de facto mora”

Last Thursday, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., cited “notable progress” in her talks with the Interior Department and decided to lift a hold on the nomination of Jacob Lew to be director of the Office of Management and Budget. She had placed a hold on Lew’s nomination to protest the Obama administration’s actions on drilling since the spill. In exchange for lifting her hold, Landrieu asked Salazar to travel to Louisiana and provide some clarity to the rules.

But Landrieu said she was “extremely disappointed” by Salazar. She was not in Houma for the meeting.

“Our industry leaders are skeptical and have every right to be,” she said.

Despite the disagreements, some progress was announced Monday.

Michael Bromwich, the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, said regulators had agreed to expedite permitting for new gas wells by taking a “tiered-approach” to worst-case oil spill scenarios. The industry has asked for wells to be permitted in a tiered-approach that takes into account the range of particular dangers of each well

Landrieu called the “commitment to the tiered permitting process … a start.” But she added that “the Gulf Coast needs much more clarity and specificity to move forward.”

Also, Salazar said there was a push to beef up the staff of BOEMRE, the agency that reviews offshore permits. The agency has requested funds for 24 new employees to review permits, Salazar said.

And it’s not as though new drilling has come to a complete halt.

Since June, when new rules for shallow wells went into place, regulators have approved 16 new permits, officials said. Shallow water wells are those drilled in waters up to 500 feet deep.

Still, regulators have not approved a single new deepwater well, which are drilled in waters deeper than 500 feet. The most promising oil reserves in the Gulf are in deeper waters.

Original Article

State officials were investigating a leak of drilling wastewater at a natural gas well site in north-central Pennsylvania that polluted a stream and a spring, a Department of Environmental Protection spokesman said Tuesday.

A department inspector discovered the leak last week while visiting an XTO Energy Inc. well site in Lycoming County, where the company is tapping into the vast Marcellus Shale gas reserve.

The inspector noticed an open bottom valve on a 21,000-gallon tank containing fluids left over from the hydraulic fracturing process used to stimulate a newly drilled well. The inspector closed the valve, but tests on two nearby waterways show signs of pollution, the department said.

Investigators still do not know how the valve opened, and have not met with XTO officials yet, department spokesman Dan Spadoni said.

A spokeswoman for XTO’s parent company, Houston-based Exxon Mobil Corp., said Tuesday that about 2,400 gallons leaked and that XTO is cleaning it up and taking steps to keep it from happening again.

However, department spokesman Dan Spadoni said XTO told his agency last week that more than 13,000 gallons leaked.

Neither the Exxon spokeswoman Rachael Moore nor Spadoni knew how long the fluid had been sitting in the tank. It was on the site of a producing well.

This isn’t the first such leak for XTO.

Violation records posted online by the department from a May inspection of a Lycoming County well owned by XTO reported a wastewater spill of about five barrels, or 200 gallons, because of an open valve. Before the latest leak, XTO had racked up 31 violations in 2010, according to department records.

XTO has drilled more than 20 Marcellus Shale wells in Pennsylvania since the beginning of 2009, department records show.

In the hydraulic fracturing process, millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are blasted into the well to break apart the shale and release the gas.

The wastewater that comes back up the well is typically a toxic sludge of dissolved chlorides, sulfates and metals accumulated in the shale, and must either be treated on site or be trucked away to a special treatment facility.

Original Article

But revised rules called confusing

Gulf oil spill claims administrator Ken Feinberg has written new rules for interim and final claims, including some last-minute tweaks to address concerns from Gulf Coast state officials, as a new three-year application period for those seeking aid for losses because of the spill begins today.

But legal advocates on the Gulf Coast say they are concerned that Feinberg has made the process only more confusing with the release of new payment protocols and a two-page form waiving the right to sue BP and others, which claimants will have to sign before they can collect final payments.

Tuesday was the end of the three-month period to file an emergency claims application with Feinberg’s Gulf Coast Claims Facility. The firm was selected by BP and President Barack Obama to administer $20 billion the oil giant set aside to pay damages; thus far, it has paid 125,000 claimants nearly $2 billion.

Those emergency payments have had no strings attached. Claimants have been able to collect the money without having to sign away their right to sue BP and other responsible parties in court.

But the new phase that begins today is intended to provide more finality, something Feinberg says he’s seeking sooner rather than later.

From now on, claimants, whether they have collected emergency payments or not, will still be able to file something called an “interim claim” without giving up the right to sue. But the interim claims can only be filed once per quarter, and they are for losses already incurred, meaning they are not as helpful to businesses and individuals with cash-flow problems.

Claimants may thus prefer instead to settle up a final claim payment, one that covers proven current and expected future losses — and one that requires the claimant to sign a covenant not to sue BP or anyone else for any losses because of the spill.

The first copies of the much-anticipated waiver were circulated to political leaders and legal advocates Tuesday. The first of two pages contains blaring warnings, in capital letters, that say claimants are giving up significant rights and shouldn’t sign the forms if they don’t understand something, underlining key parts for emphasis.

“DO NOT SIGN THIS DOCUMENT UNLESS YOU UNDERSTAND AND AGREE TO ALL OF ITS TERMS,” it reads.

Craig Baab, senior fellow with the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice in Montgomery, Ala., said pro bono advocates are worried about a number of issues with the waivers.

For one thing, Baab said forms full of legalese will only drive bewildered spill victims into already-clogged courts.

“We’re not encouraging anyone to go to court; we agree this is the best process for resolving these claims,” Baab said. “But when the waiver is so complicated and you have people that are low-wage, low-education workers trying to make decisions about what to claim and how to claim, this is only going to cause what Feinberg said he wanted to avoid, and that’s more people going to court.”

‘A goofy ratio’

Feinberg has received far more claims than he expected when he took over from BP in August. He’s denied more than 67,000 claims outright. That’s more than one-third of all of the fully documented claims the Gulf Coast Claims Facility has reviewed so far. Baab called that “a goofy ratio” that clearly indicates “that a lot of people don’t know what they’re doing and the difficulty of this process.”

Echoing Baab’s organization, Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, the Louisiana Justice Institute and other legal advocacy groups, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood wrote a letter to Feinberg last week expressing concern about the lack of access for potential claimants to free legal advice. Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell said he, too, raised concerns to Feinberg and is conferring with Hood and the other regional attorneys general to press Feinberg for more limited waivers.

Feinberg responded on Monday by assuring Hood that “any individual claimant who seeks pro bono counsel to assist him/her … will be afforded same.”

Feinberg told The Times-Picayune that he would love to have a network of trial lawyers offering free legal services to claimants. The Association of Trial Lawyers of America came to him and established a service of 1,500 pro-bono advocates for claimants to the Sept. 11 victim compensation fund when Feinberg administered it after the 2001 terror attacks. But, Feinberg said, national legal organizations have not stepped to the plate this time.

Baab said that may be true, but he added that “25 of us on the coast went to him with a proposal this summer, and he said we’ll just get one pro bono lawyer per state.”

A report on the Sept. 11 claims process found that three-quarters of all claimants had legal representation. Feinberg said that during the emergency claims process, fewer than 50 of more than 400,000 claimants asked for free legal service, and they were all connected with lawyers. Still, Feinberg admitted that interest in legal representation might spike after claimants seek final payment and see the waiver forms, and he promised to “watch it very carefully.”

Waiving rights to sue BP

One part of the waiver form that drew Baab’s ire is a provision stating that a claimant gives up the right to sue BP and other responsible parties, not just for him or herself, but for “affiliates” too — including his or her spouse, parents and heirs. The form also applies to commercial claimants, and they are asked to sign away the rights of their partners, shareholders and others to sue, as well.

Feinberg said that wasn’t intended to prevent relatives from pursuing separate claims, only to ensure that people sharing property, such as a husband and wife, can’t turn around and sue for the same basic claim for which they already accepted a final payment from the Gulf Coast Claims Facility. Baab called that explanation “crap,” saying Feinberg could easily tighten the language so that it isn’t so broad.

Hood also criticized Feinberg for “a lack of transparency in the process,” and Feinberg, as he has in the past, acknowledged that the Gulf Coast Claims Facility has not communicated well with applicants when denying claims or paying less than requested.

Feinberg will try to address that in the new process, sending claimants written explanations of why they were denied or got less than they sought.

At Hood’s request, Feinberg added a limited internal appeals process for applicants who dispute their interim or final payment determinations. A claimant also has the right to appeal the claims facility’s payment offer to the Coast Guard or to the courts before accepting a final payment.

Feinberg will select a “distinguished” retired judge or law professor to appoint several appeal judges. Claimants will then be able to appeal their final claim determination if it is larger than $250,000. The new protocols also allow BP to appeal any payments of greater than $500,000.

Feinberg has resisted providing a formal appeals process during the emergency payment period, saying it would slow the process down when claimants already have the right to sue in court or seek redress from the Coast Guard. Feinberg said a handful of emergency payments were reviewed by the Coast Guard.

Final payment offers are good for 90 days.

Original Article

The Department of Energy has joined the small group of supporters — led by the likes of T. Boone Pickens and Honda — of the natural gas car. On Monday afternoon, DOE Secretary Steven Chu announced a $50 million conditional loan commitment for a startup called The Vehicle Production Group (VPG), which will use the funds to make a six-passenger, wheel chair-accessible car that has a natural gas fueling option, called the MV-1.

There’s been little federal government support of natural gas vehicles to date, given electric vehicles, hybrids and biofuel-powered cars have gotten more attention from the auto industry, entrepreneurs and investors. Despite the insistence (and funding) from oil baron turned green power investor T. Boone Pickens. But some states, local governments and companies (like AT&T) have turned to natural gas cars for fleets.

Four-year-old VPG says its MV-1 car is the only vehicle that has a factory built-in natural gas fueling option. In contrast, most of the small amount of natural gas cars on the roads are conversions. But as BAF Technologies President John Bacon told us last year, converting a car to natural gas can cost around $10,000. Not cheap.

That’s why large fleet orders are key to making natural gas vehicle conversions make economic sense not only for high mileage customers — who can reap savings on fuel — but also for the conversion provider. Consumer natural gas cars, on the other hand, have gone nowhere to date because the economics just don’t make sense. At the L.A. Auto Show last week, I spotted Honda’s natural gas-powered sedan, along with the Phill home charger, but very few of these are currently being used by consumers.

VPG says on its website that final pricing of the MV-1 hasn’t been announced, but the base model is expected to come in under $40,000. The DOE says in its release on the loan that VPG will produce around 22,650 vehicles per year at the Mishawaka, Ind. AM General Plant, and the project will create more than 900 jobs.

The loan will come out of the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program, a coveted program which has doled out money to Tesla, Fisker Automotive, Nissan and Ford.

Original Article

Greener, cheaper, more efficient oil extraction made possible at ISIS

A research team led by the University of Bristol has used STFC’s ISIS Neutron Source to come up with a new way to treat carbon dioxide (CO2), so that it can be used in efficient and environmentally friendly methods for extracting oil. These new CO2 soluble additives can also be used to reduce the environmental damage caused by every day industrial processes such as food processing and the manufacture of electronics. The results of this work are published in the journal Langmuir.

The researchers have developed a soap-like additive for CO2 that turns it into a viable solvent for commercial-scale enhanced oil recovery to increase the amount of crude oil that can be extracted from oil fields.

“Carbon dioxide is useful in enhanced oil recovery as it is able to flow through the pores in the rock much more easily than water,” said Professor Julian Eastoe from the University of Bristol. “The additive, a surfactant, will help thicken the carbon dioxide, which is vital for this process, allowing it to flow through the rock more efficiently. There is also a useful side effect of our ability to use CO2 in this way, as in the future the process will take carbon dioxide generated by industrial activity from the atmosphere and lock it deep underground. Getting longer life out of existing oil reserves will also give more time for research into replacements into non-carbon energy sources such as solar or hydrogen.”

Minister for Science and Universities David Willetts said: “This shows what science can do for the environment. It’s why the Government has protected the science budget. In particular it shows how financing core science facilities can lead to many different projects with valuable applications.”

Liquid CO2 is increasingly being used industrially to replace common petrochemical solvents because it requires less processing and it can be easily recycled. The difficulty has been that in order to operate effectively as a solvent, carbon dioxide needs additives, many of which are in themselves, damaging to the environment. This new development by an international team including scientists from Bristol University led by Professor Julian Eastoe, from the University of Pittsburgh led by Professor Bob Enick and ISIS scientists Dr Sarah Rogers and Dr Richard Heenan provides a solution. The project has been funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the US Department of Energy to explore using high pressure CO2 to extract residual oil retained in the pores of rock.

“The quest to find a chemical capable of modifying the properties of CO2 to make it suitable for widespread use as a solvent in enhanced oil recovery has been long,” said Professor Bob Enick. “Previous advances have involved surfactants containing fluorine, which although highly soluble in CO2, are very environmentally damaging. The new additive, surfactant TC14, contains no fluorine at all and is a harmless hydrocarbon.”

CO2 offers an efficient, cheap, non-toxic, non-flammable and environmentally responsible alternative to conventional petrochemical solvents. Even water as a solvent for example, comes with its own set of problems; after being used to flush out oil from rocks it then requires cleaning before it can be used again, whereas liquid CO2 can be re-used immediately.

The paper published in the Langmuir is the first to come from Sans2d, one of seven new neutron instruments built at the ISIS second target station, a £145 million expansion to the facility completed last year. It is also one of the first to be published using data collected at the new target station.

The new additive, surfactant TC14 enables small pockets to form in the liquid CO2 called reverse micelles causing the liquid to thicken. Neutron scattering at ISIS allowed the structure of the reverse micelles to be studied in the CO2 as they formed under high pressure. The neutron instruments giving this molecular level viewpoint are often described as ‘super-microscopes’.

“Beams of neutrons are able to penetrate deep inside samples giving unique information about the location and arrangement of the micelles at a molecular level,” said ISIS scientist Dr Sarah Rogers.

“By altering the pressure in a specially constructed experimental cell, dissolved material can easily be separated and removed leaving the carbon dioxide for the next use. It would be difficult to look at this system using any other technique as the CO2 needs to be kept under high pressure. Only under the scrutiny of neutron beams can you fully reveal its actions and properties.”

“Experiments on Sans2d are particularly fast and accurate in comparison to some older neutron scattering instruments. This development of neutron instrument technology is part of what makes ISIS a world leading science facility,” said Professor Eastoe.

Original Article

Lubchenco and other Obama administration officials released a pie chart on Aug. 4 that concluded that 26 percent of the 4.9 million barrels of oil released from the Macondo well remained as “residual,” on or just below the surface as light sheen and weathered tarballs, washed ashore or  buried in sand and sediments.

The original report relied on the results of the government’s “oil budget calculator” that was created as a tracking system for the gushing oil, and was being used to direct response and clean-up operations, including the use of offshore in-situ burns of surface oil and of dispersants.

The new report does not address how much oil remains in the Gulf today or the ultimate impact of the oil release, Lubchenco said. That information is awaiting the compilation of results of more than 125 sampling expeditions using 25 deepwater vessels, which have produced 30,000 water and sediment samples from areas along the coast from the Texas-Louisiana border to the Florida Keys and 300 miles out to sea, she said.

Those results are part of the the Natural Resource Damage Assessment process being conducted by federal agencies, states and Indian tribes, which will result in recommendations for mitigating damages that will be paid for by BP and other parties responsible for the oil disaster.

More than 8,500 response workers are still cleaning up oil along the coast, federal officials say, with 93 miles of shoreline experiencing moderate to heavy oil impacts, including 86 miles in Louisiana. Another 483 miles of shoreline have light to trace oil impacts, including 226 miles in Louisiana.

The biggest change in the new report is in the estimate of the amount of oil that was turned into tiny droplets by chemical dispersants. The original report said 16 percent of the oil had been naturally dispersed, while 8 percent was chemically dispersed.

Tuesday’s report found that 16 percent of the oil was chemically dispersed and only 13 percent was naturally dispersed. The additional oil moved into the chemically-dispersed category included 2 percent that was originally thought to have evaporated or dissolved, reducing that category to 23 percent, and 3 percent from the “residual” category.

Remaining the same were estimates of the amount of oil that was directly recovered, 17 percent; burned, 5 percent, and skimmed, 3 percent.

Lubchenco said information from sampling taken during research cruises helped the authors of the new report in changing the estimates.

The new report, authored by scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey, National Institute of Standards and Technology and NOAA, reduced to 23 percent the amount of residual oil. But Lubchenco said both the earlier estimate and the new estimate were within the range of error calculated in the new report.

The new report was peer reviewed by scientists chosen by the University of New Hampshire Coastal Response Research Center. It was ordered by the Obama Administration when questions were raised about the accuracy of the original report, after several administration officials used its findings on the day it was released to tout the effectiveness of the BP-government oil cleanup.

“I think the bottom line is that I was in error in the press conference when I said the report was peer reviewed,” Lubchenco said Tuesday, saying she used the phrase “peer review” because she was aware several independent scientists had helped administration researchers in its preparation.

Original Article

It sounds like a crazy conspiracy — too extreme to be true. Flaming tap water, dead animals, secret chemical formulas, mysterious illnesses afflicting whole communities, and people afraid to speak up.

The November 11th episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation brought viewers to a small town taken over by — industrial gas drilling. The storyline in “Fracked” follows the investigators as they attempt to uncover the truth behind two murders, but end up discovering a much bigger crime: an industry destroying people’s lives with no accountability.

Laurence Fishburne examines contaminated water on CSI.

Although the story told on CSI is fictional, the parallels to real life are stark. In Colorado, Wyoming, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and several other states, the method of gas drilling called hydraulic fracturing has wreaked havoc on people’s lives.  Across the country hydraulic fracturing has been linked to many cases of water so polluted with gas that you can actually light it on fire.

Hydraulic fracturing (or “hydro-fracking”) involves pumping millions of gallons of toxic chemicals deep underground to break up rock formations and release pockets of gas.  The process can lead to contamination of underground drinking water sources, as well as severe land and air pollution above ground.

Like in the CSI episode, many people who have been impacted by hydraulic fracturing have been forced to keep silent, signing nondisclosure agreements in order to receive small settlements—or even just deliveries of drinkable water.  But the stories that have come to light don’t paint a rosy picture of the gas industry.

Last year in Louisiana, sixteen cows dropped dead within hours of drinking from puddles tainted with a mysterious green fluid in a pasture next to a fracking well site. Chesapeake Energy, the company that owned the rig, refused to identify the chemicals in the fluid.

In 2008, a woman who briefly came into contact with fracturing fluids nearly died from acute liver, heart, and respiratory failure. Cathy Behr, an emergency room nurse in Durago, Colorado, treated a worker from a gas well site who was caught in a chemical spill.  Behr spent just 10 minutes with the patient upon his initial entry to the hospital—putting his chemical-laced clothing into a bag and helping him to clean off.  Despite her limited exposure, she immediately lost her sense of smell and rapidly became gravely ill.  As doctors fought to save Behr’s life, the company that manufactured the chemicals refused to reveal the composition of the fluid—calling the formula a trade secret.

And just a few days ago in Colorado, a woman who spent years in close proximity to numerous gas wells died after a prolonged battle with a rare form of cancer. Drilling rigs were located as close as 300 feet from Chris Mobaldi’s home in Rifle, Colorado between 1997 and 2004. Mobaldi was diagnosed with her first pituitary tumor four years after gas drilling began in the area, and experienced other rare ailments that indicated severe brain damage. Mobaldi’s doctors say that exposure to contaminants from the nearby drilling activities is to blame, but there have been no studies on the long-term health consequences of exposure to fracking chemicals. Now Mobaldi’s husband is seeking to donate her body for medical research and struggling to find anyone who can help.

As in the CSI episode, there are few resources to help the real life people who are fighting this nightmare in their backyards, and the industry is often completely unregulated and unaccountable for the devastation they cause.

Gas companies don’t have to tell residents, state agencies—or even hospitals—what chemicals they use at drilling sites because hydraulic fracturing is specifically exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act through a provision nicknamed “the Halliburton Loophole.”  Due to the Halliburton Loophole, and a host of other loopholes for the gas industry, the EPA has absolutely no power to regulate hydraulic fracturing.

In response to the situation, some states and towns are taking matters into their own hands and saying “No” to hydraulic fracturing. The City of Pittsburgh recently banned hydraulic fracturing within city limits by invoking its citizens’ rights to clean air and water.

Chris Mobaldi died earlier this week from a rare persistent tumor, after years of exposure to toxic chemicals from gas drilling.

But despite small victories, most politicians in our state capitols and Congress are ignoring the devastating warning signs: the sick people, the poisoned water wells.  They want us to believe—and they believe themselves—that natural gas is a clean miracle fuel.

The FRAC Act—which would close the notorious Halliburton Loophole and force hydraulic fracturing to be regulated by the EPA—has gained little support in Congress. Instead, lawmakers in both parties are finding common ground championing legislation that would give $5 billion in subsidies to the natural gas industry.  Outrageously, these politicians want to sell us on natural gas as the solution to climate change, the magic bullet for getting America off foreign oil, and as the “clean” alternative to offshore oil drilling.  It is none of those things.

It’s time for politicians across the U.S. to wake up and realize that natural gas is not a miracle substance or a “clean transition fuel,” it’s a bridge to nowhere.

I got involved in this fight because hydraulic fracturing came to my home in rural upstate New York.  But this is an issue that affects millions—and not just people in isolated farming communities.  Gas companies want to put 30,000 gas wells in the area where 15 million people get their drinking water: that’s New York City, Philadelphia, half of New Jersey, and 80 percent of Delaware.

It sounds too crazy to be true, but it might happen if we don’t get organized to stop it now.  The only way we’re going to defeat the gas industry and protect our water is if people become informed about these practices on a massive scale.  Please encourage your friends to see the documentary Gasland.  And click here to take action and urge leaders in Congress to dump the subsidies for dirty gas, and make the gas industry obey the basic laws that protect our water and our future.

Original Article

(CHK, ECA, HK, EOG, XOM, DVN, XCO, FST, PXP, EP, COG, SM, GDP, CRK, CLR, DCP, KMP, ETP)

US shale gas deposits were known to have existed for decades. The problem was how to turn them into flowing wells. The natural gas was tightly compressed into small pockets in virtually impermeable rock. In the late 1990s, a small company called Mitchell Energy figured out how to fracture the rock and get the gas flowing. That happened in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in a gas deposit known as the Barnett shale.

Another deposit off to the northeast was known as the Haynesville shale, most of which is located in northwestern Louisiana with related deposits into southwestern Arkansas and east Texas. As exploration developed in the Haynesville shale, the estimated size of the resource was calculated at more than 250 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. That’s more than enough to supply the entire US consumption of natural gas for 10 years at current rates. The Haynesville shale is believed to be the largest natural gas reservoir in North America.

Drilling began in the Haynesville shale in about 2008 and the area is now dotted with wells drilled by more than two dozen companies. The following list names the 15 largest publicly traded companies by their net acreage holdings in the Haynesville shale as reported on their 2009 annual reports. Net acreage is equal to wholly-owned leases plus participation shares in jointly held leases.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. (NYSE: CHK) – 514,425 net acres

EnCana Corp. (NYSE: ECA) – 429,000 net acres

EOG Resources, Inc. (NYSE: EOG) – approximately 370,000 net acres

Petrohawk Energy Corp. (NYSE: HK) – 360,000 net acres

Forest Oil Corp. (NYSE: FST) – 250,098 net acres

Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) – 166,000 net acres

EXCO Resources Inc. (NYSE: XCO) – 155,945 net acres

Plains Exploration & Production Co. (NYSE: PXP) – 111,000 net acres

Goodrich Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: GDP) – 84,859 net acres

Comstock Resources Inc. (NYSE: CRK) – 72,638 net acres

St. Mary Land & Exploration Co. (NYSE: SM) – approximately 41,000 acres

El Paso Corp. (NYSE: EP) – approximately 40,000 net acres

Continental Resources Inc. (NYSE: CLR) – 24,200 net acres

Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. (NYSE: COG) – 5,852 net acres

Plains also owns 20% of Chesapeake’s interest in the Haynesville shale. Exxon got its share of the play with its purchase last year of XTO Energy.

Three pipeline companies also have extensive operations in the Haynesville play. Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, L.P. (NYSE: KMP) owns a 50% share of a joint venture with PetroHawk, which owns and operates a pipeline and gathering system that will handle more than 800 million cubic feet/day by the end of 2010. Energy Transfer Partners L.P. (NYSE: ETP) is completing the Tiger Pipeline, a 175-mile, 42-inch interstate pipeline that will interconnect with other interstate pipelines to haul the gas to the east and northeast US. DCP Midstream Partners LP (NYSE: DPM) owns and operates some 4,660 miles of gathering and transport pipeline in the Haynesville play.

Oil field services companies also participate by providing the high pressure pumping systems and fluids that break up the shales and allow the gas to flow to the surface. Halliburton Co. (NYSE: HAL), Schlumberger Ltd. (NYSE: SLB), and Baker Hughes Inc. (NYSE: BHI) are among the players here.

The fracturing techniques and the fluids used to force the cracking have come under some scrutiny. The services companies have long held that their fluid formulas are proprietary, and they have refused to give up the exact formulas for the fluids. Some localities and environmental groups are trying to force the companies to release the formulas in order to determine if the chemicals are making their way into local drinking water supplies.

General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) has recently introduced a new mobile fracking solution in what appears to be a giant opportunity in what the company called “energy efficient, fully transportable, cost effective and that it will enable onsite frac water recycling.”

Haynesville and other natural gas regions have been highlighted in many documentaries and many articles of late.  Some are favorable, some are very critical.  T. Boone Pickens and others are also touting natural gas as the bridge fuel that can get America off of foreign energy dependence.  This is work in progress with an unfinished outcome.  There are billions upon billions of dollars at stake.

Original Article