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Housing subdivisions have popped up in previously undeveloped areas across the Fort Worth area, putting homes closer to natural gas drillings sites like this one in Crowley. (Camilo Diaz | Fort Worth Report)
” data-medium-file=”https://fortworthreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Barnett-Shale_CamiloDiaz-5-scaled.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://fortworthreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Barnett-Shale_CamiloDiaz-5-scaled.jpg?fit=780%2C520&ssl=1″ tabindex=”0″ role=”button”>Barnett Shale: A glance back, a look forward 

Between 2002 and 2009, an unprecedented boom in urban natural gas drilling changed the face of Tarrant County. Fifteen years later, Fort Worth is still profiting from — and wrestling with — its consequences. During the next month, the Fort Worth Report will publish a series on the Barnett Shale and its impact on the county, the state and the industry.

You’re reading part two, which focuses on the backlash against natural gas drilling. Part one focused on the boom. Future stories will explore the Barnett’s impact on Texas’ legislative landscape, as well as how the boom continues to shape Tarrant County today.A decade before fracking arrived in Fort Worth, Don Young penned a letter to a Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist. He had a story idea: the rise of natural gas extraction and its consequences for the planet. “With the oil companies pushing it as the auto fuel of the future, the potential for major pollution problems needs to be brought up in the press,” Young wrote in the April 1993 letter. Eleven years later, Young found himself in an unlikely position: sitting on the front lines of the natural gas drilling boom, wrestling with the consequences for Tarrant County and Tandy Hills Natural Area, the swath of prairie across the street from Young’s east Fort Worth home. When Young heard that a company was interested in drilling underneath the native landscape, he sprang into action. “That was like a bullet to my brain,” he recalled. “I spent every waking hour thinking about this stuff. What can I do to stop this?” Tandy Hills Natural Area in east Fort Worth overlooks downtown. The native prairie is a refuge for thousands of native plants. (Rachel Behrndt | Fort Worth Report)Barnett brought influx of landmen to Fort WorthWhere Young saw the potential for pollution, explosions and green space transformed into drill sites, natural gas companies spotted an unprecedented opportunity to tap into the Barnett Shale, a 5,000-square-mile natural gas reserve deep underneath 18 North Texas counties. Trapped in dense source rock more than 1½ miles beneath the ground, breaking through the shale to access gas was not economically viable until companies developed “slickwater” hydraulic fracturing — known as fracking — and horizontal drilling techniques that increased production, reduced costs and made the operation profitable. The drilling techniques were also controversial, leading to concerns about toxic volatile organic compounds like benzene, xylene and toluene that are emitted as part of the fracking process, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Fracking operations have been linked to higher rates of childhood asthma as well as more frequent earthquake activity — a phenomenon that rocked North Texas in the 2010s. As environmental activists and residents raised the alarm, gas operators sought to make their fortunes in Fort Worth. The Barnett Shale boom produced nearly 115,000 jobs by 2013 and generated more than 4,000 drilling permits at its peak in 2008. From left to right: TCU’s Jennifer Engel interviews Larry Brogdon, Brad Cunningham and Hunter Enis of Four Sevens Oil Company during the 2024 Global Energy Symposium on March 21, 2024. (Haley Samsel | Fort Worth Report)Four Sevens Oil Company was one of the first to take the Barnett Shale — and the expansion of urban gas drilling — seriously. During a TCU Energy Institute event in March, Four Sevens executive Brad Cunningham recalled that the company made itself competitive by securing rights to drill sites and pipelines right away. “Once you had that, you controlled the gas, so you really knocked the competition out of the game,” said Cunningham, the son of the late Dick Lowe, one of the company’s partners. “That’s what we did. We went and carpet-bombed this place with drill sites.” To then-Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief, the boom represented a win-win for residents and the industry. The city also earned millions in new revenue for park and airport improvements as it signed lease agreements to drill under government-owned properties. “For people who were struggling to pay their mortgage, or trying to put kids through school, or trying to pay off what they owed on their truck, or even trying to take a family vacation, this was an opportunity for new wealth for them,” Moncrief said. “So we couldn’t afford to fail.” Gas companies and City Council members had an “unwritten” understanding that if companies tried to evade the rules, their proposal might not make it through the zoning commission or council, Moncrief said. He could recall only one time where he met with industry representatives to warn that they were playing outside the lines. “Other than that, most of them pretty much played by the rules,” Moncrief said. Mike Moncrief, pictured in 2006, served as Fort Worth’s mayor between 2003 and 2011. His tenure saw the arrival of the Barnett Shale boom, presenting new challenges in terms of permitting, regulation and neighborhood impact. (José L. Castillo Collection | UNT Libraries Special Collections)Landmen flocked to the Fort Worth area to sign mineral rights leases with property owners in the mid-2000s, many of them recent college graduates or community members hired to talk with neighbors.Garrett Elander, president of the Fort Worth Association of Professional Landmen, entered the field in 2007 fresh out of the University of Texas at Austin. He worked as an independent contractor for a land services company, where he witnessed the influx of landmen into the Fort Worth area. “I was so young then, I don’t know that I fully comprehended the extent of how big the Barnett Shale really was locally,” Elander said. “The work was labor intensive and required a lot of bodies, due to the nature of the title examination, oral and written communication with surface and mineral owners. There was a big need for landmen in this area.”Uneven outcomes for neighborhoodsMany landmen were not in the profession for the long term, Elander said. Amid the frenzy, some earned a reputation for playing fast and loose with the facts, or using pressure tactics to convince property owners to quickly sign with their company over a competitor’s. Libby Willis, pictured during her 2014 run for Texas Senate District 10, served as president of the Fort Worth League of Neighborhood Associations during the shale’s boom years. ( Shelley Kofler | KERA News)“Neighborhoods were seeing landmen showing up at their doors with leases in hand, and they wanted them to sign them on the spot,” said Libby Willis, who served multiple terms as president of the Fort Worth League of Neighborhood Associations during the boom years. As landmen arrived, some homeowners banded together to negotiate the most favorable terms in their lease agreements. They hired attorneys, hosted meetings and spoke before the City Council to advocate for better landscaping or noise control measures before permits were issued. Others worked with landmen on an individual basis. In Oakhurst, the northeast Fort Worth community Willis calls home, neighborhood leaders had the benefit of accessing oil and gas industry experts who could help them drive a harder bargain for higher bonuses and royalties. Not every neighborhood could say the same, Willis said. “Some folks probably were taken advantage of because it was all so new, and people didn’t know quite what to make of it,” she said. “They might be prone to say: ‘Well, this looks pretty good. Let’s just do this,’ and then later they’d be surprised when other neighborhoods got more.” Lon Burnam, then a Democrat representing Fort Worth in the Texas House, was disturbed by some of the methods he saw Chesapeake Energy deploy in lower income areas like Northside and Como. While his neighbors in Fairmount could easily negotiate for more trees or walls around gas drilling sites, companies were less likely to offer those things to poorer communities without a fight, Burnam said. “That is the reason they went to the lower-income neighborhoods first, because there were fewer attorneys, fewer people who knew the law, fewer people with oil and gas interests,” Burnam said. “At one point, I thought landmen were more evil than drug dealers. They were so deceptive to these low-income neighborhoods.” Lon Burnam, who represented Fort Worth in the state Legislature between 1997 and 2014, speaks during an October 2021 Tarrant Regional Water District meeting. (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report)As members of the American Association of Professional Landmen, landmen follow ethical guidelines outlined by the group, Elander said. Headquartered in Fort Worth, the national association was a filming location for Taylor Sheridan’s upcoming series, “Landman.” “As you see in any business, unfortunately there are a few bad actors that give certain landmen a bad name or a bad reputation,” Elander said. “But I think for most of us, I know for me personally, we take that code of conduct seriously.” He added: “A landman is the face of the company for the landowner, whether it’s their direct employer or their client. There is a responsibility to conduct yourself with honesty and integrity.”Challenging the playbookWhile many residents were eager to begin receiving royalty checks, a smaller group became disillusioned with the landmen’s playbook. Young, a glass artist by trade, was an outspoken opponent as the founder of Fort Worth Citizens Against Neighborhood Drilling Operations, also known as Fort Worth CAN DO. The cause launched in his living room, where a gathering of Meadowbrook neighbors created the Friends of Tandy Hills Natural Area to prevent drilling on the prairie. Don Young, left, and Gordon Scruggs talk outside of Tandy Hills Natural Area in June 2021. Young co-founded Friends of Tandy Hills Natural Area in 2004. (Rachel Behrndt | Fort Worth Report) From there, Young worked in tandem with other activists to distribute yard signs, attend council meetings, speak to national media and, later, produce the documentary “Dirty Ol’ Town.” Fort Worth CAN DO advocated for a moratorium on drilling and a minimum of 3,000 feet between drilling and sensitive uses such as homes, schools and hospitals. “Next thing you know, I had reporters from The New York Times, Washington Post, a Japanese newspaper. The guys from 60 Minutes called. ABC News was here,” Young said, noting those stories were more sympathetic to his cause than local media. “It was just so much attention.” Greg Hughes, an engineer and longtime Fort Worth resident living near TCU during the boom, didn’t set out to be an environmental activist. But he was concerned by what he saw as a lack of effort to protect residents from the impact of natural gas drilling in urban areas. “All this heavy industrial activity could basically happen anywhere they chose,” Hughes said. “I couldn’t believe that there was so little opposition.” Alongside a few neighbors, Hughes decided not to lease his mineral rights to Chesapeake in 2009. The company informed Hughes that it would lay claim to his rights by seeking an exception to a state law, known as Rule 37, that bans drilling too close to existing pads or other wells. Greg Hughes stands in front of a mural at Black Coffee on March 11, 2024. (Emily Wolf | Fort Worth Report)The Railroad Commission of Texas, which oversees the oil and gas industry, can grant exceptions to the law that allows companies to drill closer to minerals they don’t own — and without paying royalties to the owners. Between 2005 and 2012, the agency rejected five of Chesapeake’s 1,628 requests for exceptions, according to a Reuters investigation. Hughes was aware of the long odds when he appealed Chesapeake’s efforts in 2010. As he and his neighbors prepared for a hearing in Austin, Hughes remembers saying: “We’re fighting a petrochemical facility in Texas, so we are going to lose. My curiosity is, how are we going to lose?” A year later, Chesapeake obtained the exception and moved forward with plans to drill near Hughes’ home. A similar scenario played out for Ranjana Bhandari in 2012, when she and her husband were informed that their appeal to the Railroad Commission had failed. Chesapeake would be able to drill for gas under their Arlington home without sending them a check.The experience — of defending her mineral rights in Austin and feeling as though her government failed to protect her health and safety — changed Bhandari’s trajectory. She went from an eco-conscious economics instructor to an environmental activist, training her eyes on the regulations that allowed urban gas drilling to thrive in Arlington and Tarrant County.“Even if there’s a small risk, why would we risk our children’s health for that?” Bhandari said of her mindset at the time. “I quickly understood that, if I was concerned about it, every mother would be if she knew about it.” Ranjana Bhandari, the executive director of Liveable Arlington, addresses Arlington City Council members during a Feb. 27, 2024, meeting. “This is a real problem because people are going to get sick,” Bhandari said of Total Energies’ new natural gas drilling permits. “People are going to suffer property damage. Mothers are going to worry every night about their children.” (Haley Samsel | Fort Worth Report)As dust settles in Fort Worth, fight in Arlington continuesLooking back on the boom, Moncrief is proud of how Fort Worth faced down unprecedented circumstances “fraught with peril.” He also acknowledges some of its costs. Fracking is a noisy, unpleasant process, he said, and there are still challenges on the horizon when it comes to the environment. “There’s still a lot of pads out there that aren’t being utilized,” Moncrief said. “They’re ugly. They probably contain chemicals that are environmental issues with the wells. There’s still some of those remaining challenges, but we got it done.” In shaping a gas drilling ordinance that allowed the industry to prosper while paying for the damage equipment did to roads, Moncrief saw Fort Worth as a model for other shale boom cities to follow. Some residents, including those who signed leasing agreements, remember it differently. The protections afforded to residents would not have come without sustained neighborhood advocacy, Willis said. The Fort Worth League of Neighborhoods produced two studies on gas pipeline safety and the impact of fracking near schools. Its members served on the city’s gas drilling task force, pushing for more safety requirements near drill sites and pipelines. Nearly 1 million people in Tarrant County live within a half-mile of oil and gas activity, according to a 2022 report. Many live near dormant drill sites, like this one pictured in Crowley in August 2024. (Camilo Diaz | Fort Worth Report)Later, the association would successfully campaign for Fort Worth to ban companies from injecting their fracking wastewater into disposal wells inside city limits. Wastewater disposal wells operate for longer durations and inject more fluid into the earth than fracking does, making the process more likely to induce earthquakes, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. To succeed, Willis and her fellow neighborhood leaders made it their business to create spaces where industry, neighborhood and city representatives could share their perspectives. Those efforts resulted in better outcomes for Fort Worthians, she said. “They’re not always going to agree, but they are better talking to each other and trying to figure out ways forward,” Willis said, “because there are good faith efforts going on — and maybe there’s some not so great efforts going on — but they need to talk to each other.” Fights over natural gas drilling permits in Fort Worth died down in the early to mid-2010s, as prices plummeted and companies closed or left town. But the battle against drilling continues in Arlington, where environmental advocacy group Liveable Arlington — led by Bhandari, its executive director — knocks on doors, files lawsuits and rallies groups to speak at council meetings against new gas well permits. A half mile from AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, natural gas drilling crews are tapping into the Barnett Shale, one of the only shale formations under such a heavily populated area. (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report)Some of those efforts have led to permit denials. However, over the protests of residents, Arlington City Council has approved a slate of drilling requests from French energy giant TotalEnergies, the inheritor of Chesapeake Energy’s leases across North Texas. Bhandari doesn’t view the Barnett Shale as a relic of the past. She sees its impact on a daily basis, as residents turn to her organization for support when they don’t understand a drill plan or complain of headaches, noise or cracks in their home foundations. Liveable Arlington needs to expand to fill more education and communication gaps, she said. “With industry expanding and the fact that it’s becoming clearer that it’s here to stay for a very long time, we need to be bigger,” Bhandari said. “We fill a lot of vacuums in this community.” ‘It’s protected forever’ Young has stepped away from the organizing that once filled his days. He stopped updating his Fort Worth CAN DO website in the mid-2010s, though it remained online through last year. “We realized it was too late,” he said. “They were all taking the money. They might have had some inkling, in the back of their minds, or worries about safety or property values, but nobody wanted to hear about it anymore.” He never stopped talking about Tandy Hills. In 2019, when Young heard that TotalEnergies was interested in selling its 50-plus acres on Broadcast Hill, he rallied residents to donate $64,000 to support the city’s purchase of the property. Don Young, who led the effort pushing @CityofFortWorth to purchase Broadcast Hill, says he is still pinching himself that the area will never be used for fracking. The prairie land was purchased from Total. @startelegram pic.twitter.com/a6QnsiLfi6— Haley Samsel 🍂 (@haley_samsel) June 26, 2020 By June 2020, the swath of indigenous prairie became the first acquisition in the city’s open space conservation program. In what Young called an “amazing turn of events,” most of the $610,000 deal was supported by Fort Worth’s oil and gas trust fund, where the city’s remaining royalties from the Barnett Shale remain. “It’s protected forever,” he said. Much of Fort Worth has transformed in the two decades since Young’s campaign began, shaped by growth and a gas boom that once seemed far-fetched.The clock stopped at Tandy Hills, where the view of the downtown Fort Worth skyline remains unchanged. Wildflowers sway in the breeze. Young can breathe easier now. Grasses sway above the Fort Worth skyline at Tandy Hills Natural Area in June 2021. The conservation area contains 160 acres of native prairie and includes the city’s first open space acquisition, Broadcast Hill. (Rachel Behrndt | Fort Worth Report)Haley Samsel is the content editor (and former environmental reporter) for the Fort Worth Report. You can reach them at haley.samsel@fortworthreport.org.At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.