Many Views on the Haynesville Shale Resource

Michael Giberson

The documentary film Haynesville offers a view of the shale gas boom from the point of view of several landowners in northeastern Louisiana. One of the landowners is a sort of good-ol’-boy type who hung onto family land and added to it even as family members moved away. His 300 or so acres of backwoods land made him a multi-millionaire when the gas developers came to town. Another part of the story shows the impact of the gas money on a growing church congregation; the preacher wants to build a new Christian school with the money. The film also follows the activities of a mother who gathers small landowners into a large block to negotiate with the gas companies for both higher payments and contractual protection for water quality and other environmental values.

Intertwined in these stories are some talking-head interviews with energy, environmental, and policy experts. I found these parts of the film mildly intrusive – but that’s probably because I already spend too much of my life reading about energy resource policy issues; likely most viewers will find the contextual information helpful. The film should be required viewing for landowners sitting over shale gas resources, especially in areas not used to oil and gas development.

The documentary is making the rounds. A showing is coming up in Houston on March 4, and the film will be part of the SXSW festival in Austin in a few weeks. If you’re interested in more information on the film, check out the website or become a fan of Haynesville on Facebook.

One of the natural gas companies doing a lot of the development of the Haynesville shale resource is Chesapeake. See, for example, their “February 2010 Investor
Presentation,” which details their interests and optimism about their work in Haynesville and elsewhere. This three-page document explains Chesapeake’s hydraulic fracturing process, including a description of the (very small amount of) chemical additives that get injected along with a lot of water and sand as part of the fracing. The summary is produced by Chesapeake, so maybe it minimized the possible risks, but the environmental risks do appear to be small. Some information on the topic is included in the Wikipedia article on hydraulic fracturing.

Meanwhile, the new conventional view that shale gas will ensure plenty of domestic natural gas for the United States for the next 100 years remains under criticism from skeptics who believe the resources are significantly over-estimated. Allen Brooks, at Musings from the Oil Patch, provides a review of some recent analysis from skeptics. As I’ve said before, it seems obvious to me that the people in the best position to know – the folks doing the drilling and producing from shale formations – have clearly signaled what they think is true by spending huge amounts of money to secure leases and develop additional properties. Nonetheless, production of vast quantities of gas from shale remains a relatively new commercial activity, so a certain amount of unavoidable uncertainty remains.