The Texas RRC is taking great measures to assure landowners and stakeholders are well informed across South Texas. For a resource the size of the Eagle Ford Shale, it is important that people understand the impact of the play. The RRC developed an Eagle Ford Task Force to help avoid the issues faced in the North Texas Barnett Shale where landowners and citizens weren't prepared for full scale development. With production on the rise and the rig count climbing, you can bet each day the Eagle Ford impacts more people.
Commissioner David Porter has created an Eagle Ford Task Force to head off the kind of public backlash that has troubled the Barnett Shale area in North Texas.
Porter is on target with his diagnosis of what went wrong in North Texas: too little information about the development process, which has been near populated areas, and a perception that the energy companies doing the work were calling the shots while the Railroad Commission was largely AWOL or doing the minimum to direct the process to ensure that public and environmental interests were protected.
To his credit, Porter is trying to avoid a repeat of that situation in South Texas and the public backlash that could hinder development of the region's immense resources. He has assembled a group of 22 stakeholders that includes representatives of drilling, pipeline and trucking companies, green energy experts and environmentalists, county and economic development officials, landowners and those who represent landowners, according a report by Vicki Vaughan of the San Antonio Express-News that ran in last Thursday's Chronicle.
Read the full news release at Chron.com