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NESS related... article on the barnett shale (land that xto is trying to obtain the leases on from ness) Most relevant info is bolded

Posted on Mon, Apr. 05, 2004



STAR-TELEGRAM/DEWUAN X. DAVIS
Pipeline delivery






Barnett feeding interest in pipeline

By Dan Piller

Star-Telegram Staff Writer


FORT WORTH - Now that gas drillers are beating a path to the Barnett Shale play near Fort Worth, efforts are being made to build infrastructure to bring to market the natural gas from Texas' largest field.

Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners is gathering support for a 52-mile, 24-inch pipeline that it wants to build from Cleburne to TXU's processing plant at Springtown. The $50 million pipeline, which would be completed by early next year, would provide a conduit to market for the multitude of Barnett Shale natural gas producers north and west of Fort Worth.

"It doesn't do much good to pump out the gas if you don't have pipelines to carry it away," said Trevor Rees-Jones, president of Chief Energy Co. and operator of 170 wells north of Fort Worth in the Barnett Shale.

The pipeline would probably increase drilling in the Barnett Shale's 12-county area by making banks and other lenders more willing to loan money for the effort.

ETP will take the initial financial and engineering risks to build the pipeline, but TXU would also benefit by getting a dependable source of newly produced Barnett Shale gas into its pipeline and processing system.

"If you sign up, you'll get on the pipeline and you'll get your gas to market," ETP's senior vice president for operations, Mackie McCrea, told producers at a meeting last month at The Cliffs resort at Possum Kingdom Lake.

"We're excited by this because it will be another way to gather the gas and get it to the markets," said Ray Patton of TXU's pipeline subsidiary.

Most of the year gas produced in the Barnett Shale would be sent all across the United States. During peak periods, most of the gas would either go directly into TXU's pipelines to serve its generators and customers, or go to TXU's Springtown processing plant to remove liquids.

The proposed pipeline would connect two existing TXU pipelines: One extends from West Texas to Cleburne; the second line runs from Young and Wise counties into Fort Worth.

A 16-inch spur from that line would extend east into Johnson County and then north into Fort Worth from the southwest. ETP executives are circumspect about the exact route and connections of the spur, expected to be the first of several to extend out from the main line.

The project would help solve a problem that has vexed natural gas producers ever since the difficult Barnett Shale field opened in 1999; how to get the hard-won gas to market.

The Barnett Shale has become Texas' hottest energy play now that geologists have solved many of the technical problems of extracting natural gas from extremely hard rock 7,000 feet deep.

Rees-Jones said that horizontal wells have proved to be a boon to Barnett Shale production and are spurring new entrants into the field.

High natural gas prices and continued demand have spurred the drilling of more than 3,400 wells in the Barnett Shale since the former Mitchell Energy (now part of Devon Energy of Oklahoma City) opened the play with 100 wells in 1999.

In the past year, Devon has been joined by heavyweights such as Burlington Resources, EOG (the former Enron Oil & Gas), Tom Brown Co. and XTO Energy and Quicksilver Resources, both of Fort Worth.

Dynegy of Houston operates a natural gas processing plant at Chico and has a heavy interest in the new pipeline.

"This would be an extensive addition to the gathering system," said David Ishmeal, manager of Dynegy's Chico plant.

The Barnett Shale got an extra boost last month with news that the long-awaited U.S. Geological Survey assessment of the Barnett shows a recoverable reserve of almost 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

"The Barnett is the most exciting thing going in Texas energy right now," said J.W. Varner, a former Mitchell Energy executive who is now a consultant to Quicksilver Resources, which has taken out 100,000 acres of leases in Parker and Hood counties west of Fort Worth.

Quicksilver and XTO have been circumspect about their plans. An XTO executive who attended the meeting but didn't want to be quoted by name said, "You can tell by our presence here that we are very interested."

The proposed ETP pipeline would serve Johnson and Hood counties, which are expected to emerge as important new sectors of the Barnett Shale. Until now, most of the play has been in Wise, Denton and Tarrant counties north of Fort Worth.

Energy Transfer Partners owns and operates 4,500 miles of gas pipelines extending from the Austin Chalk formation in south-central Texas to the TXU pipeline system in Limestone County. It also operates a pipeline from the Permian Basin in West Texas to the Katy Hub, serving Houston.

The company reorganized in February with a reverse merger with Heritage Propane Partners of Tulsa, Okla. The co-chief executives are Ray Davis and Kelcy Warren, who worked with Cornerstone Natural Gas and Crosstex Energy before organizing Energy Transfer Partners in 1996.

A heavyweight investor and director in Energy Transfer Partners is Kenneth Hersh of Fort Worth, who manages the $1.6 billion Natural Gas Partners investment fund. Hersh is a director of several energy companies and is a well-known name in the energy exploration business.

"We did the first phases of the development of ETP on our own nickels," Davis said. "For this project, we needed deeper pockets, and that was what led us to Mr. Hersh."

Two other investors of note in ETP are the endowment funds of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, which have put unspecified amounts of money into the ETP venture.

The company has brought in Tom Landry Jr., son of the late Dallas Cowboys coach, and one of coach Landry's former players, All-Pro defensive back Cliff Harris, to help with marketing and right-of-way acquisition.

"We hope to have the right of way acquired and the pipeline laid by the first quarter of 2005," Landry said.


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Dan Piller, [phone] [e-mail]