If you were planning to be in Council chambers on the July 8 for the high-impact hearing on the Eighth Avenue drilling site, your evening just opened up. A source close to the process confirmed this evening that Chesapeake contacted the city and asked for a postponement.

What this means remains unclear right now, however this doesn’t seem to be a sudden Road to Damascus moment on the part of Chesapeake, this is just RealPolitik. The word going around was that the votes weren’t there for Chesapeake, and we aren’t talking a 5-4 vote. It was going to be a clear majority, if not a unanimous vote, against the permit.

This issue has gotten too hot for the Council and no one, not even Chesapeake’s BFF Mayor Mikey, was willing to stick his neck out when Council chambers would be overflowing with hundred of pissed off residents of Ryan Place, Fairmount, Mistletoe Heights and Berkeley neighborhoods. They were already setting up shuttle bus service to take people to the meeting — not a good sign for Chesapeake.

However, what will happen next is complicated and convoluted.
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Back in February, I got a burr in my saddle. Right after Mayor Mike decided to put the fix in on the Gas Drilling Task Force, stack the deck heavily in favor of the industry and keep any meaningful discussion about injection wells out the public eye, I got a little curious.

What’s going on here? How does the Mayor take an issue that the public is keenly interested in and completely cut the public out of the process?

So, on Feb. 26, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request with the City of Fort Worth to find out why. I asked the City to supply all emails between the Mayor and anyone affiliated with Chesapeake Energy between that day and Jan. 1, 2007. I also asked for email between the Mayor and any city department on the topic of injection wells over the same period.

I can’t possibly cover everything that I gleaned from the entire process in one post, so I’m just going to focus on the emails between the Mayor and Chesapeake Energy over that period.

My assumption going in to this process would be that there would be a heavy volume of email. After all, this is the same period of time when the Trinity Trees incident went down. I expected some interesting stuff.

And how many emails did I get between Mikey and Chesapeake mouthpiece Julie Wilson, CEO Aubrey McClendon or anyone else at Chesapeake Energy?
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Back in February when Mayor Mike Moncrief kicked off the charade that is the Gas Drilling Task Force, he said it was all about quality of life.

In fact, Mikey was so concerned about quality of life, that he didn’t even bother to show up at last night’s public meeting to hear what his constituents actually had to say. I assume he was hanging out with his friends from Chesapeake — Aubrey McClendon and Julie Wilson — as they flipped the switch on the lights over at Castle Grayskull, formerly Pier 1 Tower. That’s what the more than 200 people in the crowd were talking about anyway.

Yep, quality of life was so important that only two members of the City Council even bothered to show up — Joel Burns and Carter Burdette. But unlike Carter, at least Joel bothered to stay until the end, even after the A/C was turned off.
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Jim Bradbury, the District 9 representative on the City’s Gas Drilling Task Force, is West and Clear’s guest for today’s podcast. He discusses the Task Force’s work on this issue, as well as many of other related areas, such as the Trinity Trail and public parks, eminent domain abuse and pipelines, injection wells and setback requirements. I would like to encourage concerned citizens of Fort Worth to attend the Public Hearing on Monday night at 6:30 at City Hall. I’d also like to encourage you to listen to Jim’s explanation of the issues.

 

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On Thursday, Chesapeake Energy submitted a high-impact waiver request with the City for the proposed drilling site at Eighth Avenue, according to an email from local attorney and concerned citizen Liane Janovsky. The site is called the ‘Railroad Lease,’ and the hearing is preliminarily set for July 8. Fort Worth & Western Railroad has submitted a letter of support for the waiver application. For an idea of how this might play out, I refer you to my previous post on Bill Davis.

Liane has two recommendations that I also agree with:

Someone whispered this in a Panther’s Ear last week: “Three days since I saw the Tommy Lee Jones Friends of the Shale ads for the first time and not a single comment from W&C on this nauseating display? You guys are letting me down.”

Yeah, we kind of sucked a little last week. We really are sorry about that. We’re getting our act together this week. Really. Less sucking, more writing.

But before you read further, please consider your own safety. If you continue reading this post after the jump, Tommy Lee Jones will come to your house and kill you. And your family. And probably your dog. He’s angry. He’s serious. He has a gun.

So for the love of God, read no further.
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Some people watch NASCAR, I watch City Hall. That’s not a judgment of the sport, it just fits into my schedule a little better. And it moves a lot slower.

Otherwise, they are a lot alike – the competition, the intrigue, the spectacle, the fiery crashes. Like NASCAR, a lot of interesting stuff happens in the pits, and if you aren’t watching, you might miss it.

Unlike NASCAR, it’s harder to identify who the sponsors are. Mike Moncrief doesn’t wear the logos of the people who pay his way like Dale Junior or Jimmie Johnson do.

This much we do know: if Mayor Mikey were a NASCAR driver, his number would be No. 1. And his sponsorship would include Chesapeake Energy, XTO, Devon and Range Resources, among others.

No. 1 because Mike is all about Mike. And we know Mike’s sponsors because of information from the Mayor’s financial disclosure appeared in the Startlegram yesterday. The minimum value of his lease or royalty agreements with 55 oil and gas companies, including major players in the Barnett Shale such as Chesapeake Energy, XTO, Devon and Range Resources came to $633,000. Nineteen of those deals were worth more than $25,000 in calendar year 2007. Oh, and then there’s the small matter of the XTO stock owned by Moncrief’s wife. Those shares – between 500 and 999 of ‘em – are valued between $32,370 and $64,675 at Wednesday’s closing price of $64.74.

How much do his holdings really amount to? We don’t know because the Mayor ain’t talking. He’s released the bare minimum amount of information, and he’s not obligated to release more.

But just with that bit of information, two statewide ethics experts told the Star-Telegram what I have been saying for months – at the very least, the appearance of impropriety exists and Mayor Mikey shouldn’t vote on any natural gas drilling issues.

But here’s where it gets funny – the city attorney’s office released a statement saying that no conflict of interest exists. Go back to being the head cheerleader for the gas drilling industry, Mr. Mayor.
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So, who’s the bad guy in this whole Eighth Avenue debacle?

Is it Chesapeake Energy? Sure, they’re easy targets. They’ve been blamed for every bad thing that’s happened in Fort Worth since 1846. And why not? These Oklahoma carpetbaggers come in here and brainwash our children, shoot poison into the earth with their injection wells, pollute our television screens with bad infomercials and build a hellish zombie-beast to run for City Council to advance their devious pro-drilling agenda.

OK, just kidding about the hellish pro-drilling zombie-beast on the city council. Although … a question for all of you … if that did happen, how could we tell the difference between said hell-beast and Carter Burdette? Maybe tie a pink ribbon around the left arm of one of them? Can we go ahead and clear this up by city ordinance just in case?

But would it rock your world if I told you that maybe Chesapeake wasn’t to blame for this bit of gas drilling brinksmanship on the South Side? Well, get ready to hang on to your top hats.
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…only this time its your kids they’re after.

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I know folks are busy, but I’d like to ask you to take a couple of minutes and write a letter to the Mayor and your City Council representative and ask them to vote to extend the moratorium on saltwater disposal wells in the City of Fort Worth.

If this extension is not passed, additional injection wells could be drilled within the city.

Jim Bradbury, the Fort Worth Gas Drilling Task Force representative from District 9, is asking all concerned Fort Worth citizens to “send a message to their City Council representatives calling for the extension of the moratorium.” Bradbury goes on to say he has “deep concerns about even letting one more injection well in the city and moreover that this is being conducted without adequate public participation and input.” He takes this position because the issue of injection wells was removed from topics allowed for consideration by the Gas Drilling Task Force where citizen input should occur.

Hell, I’ll even write the letter for you. Just cut, paste and make any needed edits:

Dear Mayor and Members of the Council:

Sincerely,
A citizen of Fort Worth

You may find the e-mail addresses you need right here.

Oh, and in case you are wondering how effective the Texas Railroad Commission oversight of oil and gas drilling is in this state, check this out. The answer is “not very effective.”