Cities have little say on Barnett Shale pipelines

By MIKE LEE

Star-Telegram staff writer

Horace Butler can look out the back window of his house on Conroy Street, just south of Interstate 20, and see crews installing a 24-inch natural gas pipeline. It's about 10 feet from his back fence.

Butler and his neighbors have a host of questions about the pipeline: What if it leaks? What will it do to property values?

Butler went to City Hall to learn more about the pipe, but it seemed that no one there knew anything.

"I checked with the City Council. They didn't know. I checked with oil and gas. They didn't know. I checked with water. They didn't know," Butler said.

Butler's neighborhood is one of dozens being affected by pipelines. As the Barnett Shale gas play pushes farther into Fort Worth, the gas companies are building a network of gathering and distribution pipelines to move the gas to the marketplace.

In some places, such as the rapidly growing areas of far north Fort Worth, neighborhoods are being built on top of existing pipelines. Two pipelines run under the campus of Keller Central High School, which opened in 2003. The same lines run across the as-yet-undeveloped Vineyards at Heritage Park.

Pipelines are being laid through other neighborhoods. A subsidiary of Chesapeake Energy has applied for permission to run a pipeline under the Fort Worth & Western Railroad tracks. The tracks run through Trinity Park, then southward past Lily B. Clayton Elementary School and the Mistletoe Heights and Berkeley Place neighborhoods.

Pipeline regulation

Pipeline companies are often considered public utilities under state law, which gives them the right to condemn land for pipelines. Once the pipelines are in place, there are usually restrictions about what can be built on top of them.

Historically, it's been difficult for cities to regulate pipelines because they are governed by state and federal agencies.

Neighborhood and environmental groups want the city to act decisively -- to ensure safety and that the network of pipes doesn't interfere with other growth in the city. Pipelines are already running through several city parks, and could be running in other sensitive areas. The Fort Worth & Western tracks, for instance, might carry commuter rails someday, and no one is clear how the pipelines under the tracks will affect those plans.

Pipelines also require equipment such as compressor stations, which can be larger than a suburban house and make noise around the clock. Chesapeake Energy is building a compressor station near the Mercado Juarez restaurant at Northside Drive and Interstate 35W to serve the same pipeline that runs through Mistletoe Heights.

Last month, City Councilwoman Wendy Davis said Fort Worth should pass an ordinance similar to one in Flower Mound, where pipeline companies have to get a license from the city before they can build a new line. The Denton County city also requires setbacks between new buildings and existing pipelines.

Davis said the city needs to act because the Texas Railroad Commission, which oversees pipelines in Texas, has dropped the ball on safety. She mentioned a report last month in The Dallas Morning News that the commission watered down a report on defective gas pipe couplings that were involved in several fatal explosions.

"I don't think it's right to simply throw our hands up ... particularly when the Railroad Commission has not demonstrated the safety oversight that assures the protection of our citizens," Davis said.

Railroad Commission spokeswoman Ramona Nye said Davis' assertions "are based on inaccurate and wrong information."

This month, the commission ordered gas companies to inspect the couplings linked to the explosions and replace those that haven't been reinforced. The commission also ordered more inspections for leaks and shortened the time period for repairing leaks.

"The facts are that the Railroad Commission has continually demonstrated nationally recognized safety oversight of pipelines," Nye said in a statement. "In April 2001, the Commission adopted the first pipeline safety integrity management program in the nation. In 2000, the Commission directed Texas natural gas utilities to remove all Poly 1 pipe in their systems, after finding evidence of substantial material failures."

Poly 1 was a type of plastic pipe used in the early 1970s. A Star-Telegram investigation in 2004 showed that Lone Star Gas, a predecessor to Atmos Energy, knew the pipe was prone to cracking even before the company began using it. The Railroad Commission learned about the problems with Poly 1 pipe in 1983, 17 years before ordering the pipe's removal.

Nye said the vast majority of pipeline accidents -- about 76 percent -- are caused by third parties, such as construction crews, not by problems with the pipelines themselves. Rust or corrosion causes about 12 percent, and material failures, such as the problems with the compression couplings, cause 12 percent.

'Give us a full map'

Jim Bradbury, a lawyer who worked on the Mistletoe Heights neighborhood association's gas-drilling task force, said the biggest problem is that city officials simply don't know where pipelines are going.

When he started asking about the pipeline along the Fort Worth & Western tracks, "all anybody knew was that part of it went through Newby Park and part of it went through Trinity Park."

He said the city has an avenue to act. Pipeline companies, even if they have the right to condemn land, must still get permission before crossing a city street or alley. That gives the city leverage to ask for detailed plans of the pipeline throughout the city, he said.

"Just say, if you want our easement, give us a full map, line to line," he said.

The League of Women Voters of Tarrant County has chimed in, calling for a moratorium on new pipelines until the city can come up with a comprehensive plan for pipeline routes.

"Approving them on a case-by-case basis without a plan in place jeopardizes future city development, including new rail stations and mixed-use development," said Linda Hanratty, the league's environmental coordinator.

Following the tracks

Chesapeake Energy, the largest driller inside the city limits, owns the lines being built in Highland Hills and along the Fort Worth & Western tracks.

Both lines will be low-pressure gathering lines, which are used to ship gas from well sites to the larger network. There will be no compressor stations near either neighborhood, Chesapeake Vice President Julie Wilson said.

The pipeline will follow the railroad tracks through Trinity Park, and it will require the city to dedicate a portion of right-of-way. But the line will be bored about 30 feet below ground through the park, because it also must go under the Trinity River, said Kent Wilkinson, Chesapeake's facilities engineer. That means there won't be any disturbance to the surface of the park. A typical pipeline is less than 5 feet below the surface.

It's less clear where and how future pipelines will be built. The Barnett Shale produces gas under relatively low pressure, Wilkinson said. That means it takes a combination of larger pipes and more compressor stations to get the gas to the market.

In most cases, once a pipeline is laid, no buildings can be built on top of the right-of-way, and trees can't be planted because their roots go too deep, Wilkinson said. For that reason, pipelines usually run close to fence lines when they cross large pieces of open land. That way, they don't leave a strip of undevelopable land. That's probably the reason the pipeline near Highland Hills is so close to residents' fences, Wilkinson said.

The pipelines are no more dangerous than gas lines that service individual houses, Wilkinson said. Texas requires that gathering lines, such as the ones being built in Mistletoe Heights and Highland Hills, meet the same standards as distribution lines, the high-pressure lines that move gas to end users. And Chesapeake is building the pipelines to a higher standard than even the state requires, in part because of the expense of building pipelines inside a dense city. Overbuilding the lines could also allow Chesapeake to change the use of the pipe or increase the pressure in the future.

"We don't want to have to go in and redo these lines," Wilkinson said. He added that he hasn't seen pipelines hurt the resale value of surrounding land.

As for city regulations, Chesapeake officials say it might be hard to comply with some of the proposals for city oversight.

Wilkinson and Wilson both believe pipelines are well-regulated by the state and federal governments.

Having the federal government set the rules means "if there's a problem anywhere in the United States, somebody has studied it," Wilkinson said.

As for the idea of filing plans with the city, energy companies don't know the exact route of pipelines until they determine the location of gas wells and other equipment. "It's just like an electric utility -- you can't tell where all the electric lines are going to be until you know where all the houses and buildings are going to be," Wilkinson said.

The Railroad Commission does not keep as-built plans showing where the lines are located, Nye said.

Opposing ordinances

Attempts by other Texas cities to regulate pipelines have run into serious opposition.

In 2003, Austin adopted an ordinance that required a $90 million insurance policy for pipelines going through sensitive environmental areas and gave the city authority to shut down pipelines. The Texas Oil & Gas Association sued the city, and a federal judge ruled that Austin had overstepped its authority, since pipelines carry gas used in interstate commerce.

In 2004, Corpus Christi passed an ordinance that required pipeline companies to pay a licensing fee to the city, and imposed extra requirements for inspections, sign postings and other safety measures. A year after the ordinance went into effect, the Texas Legislature passed a law that prohibited Corpus Christi from collecting anything more than the city's actual costs, said Geoffrey Gay, an Austin attorney who specializes in utility law.

"The Legislature undercut the intent of the ordinance," Gay said.

Assistant City Attorney Sarah Fullenwider sent a member to City Council members this month saying there's little Fort Worth can do to affect the pipeline plans.

Fullenwider wrote that cities do not have the authority to regulate the design and construction standards of the lines, cannot require permits or inspections, cannot control location of the lines, and cannot set safety standards.

But cities can control new homes and other buildings that are built around pipelines. After Austin's insurance requirements were struck down, the city concentrated on making sure that any structure built near a large pipeline would withstand a fire long enough for the occupants to escape, said Chuck Lesniak, Austin's environmental program coordinator. That helps prevent casualties, even during periods when state and federal oversight is lax.

"It's really an 'out of sight, out of mind' kind of thing," Lesniak said. "People don't think about it at all until there's an accident."

Austin has also developed a working relationship with Exxon Mobil, which owns a gasoline pipeline that runs through the city, Lesniak said. Pipeline operators, whose inspection reports are not public and who have historically kept information to themselves, now share data with city officials, Lesniak said.

"They realize it's a double-edged sword and that information could be used against them," he said. "They're taking the longer view and the broader view that [they] are going to be in these communities for a long time."

The debate

It's unclear at this point what city officials will do.

City Attorney David Yett agreed that Fort Worth might be able to require companies to provide more information on their pipelines. "When they cross city property, we have some authority as a property owner to say, 'We want some information,'" he said.

Davis, who has also called for rewriting other parts of the city gas ordinance, is stepping down in the next few weeks to run for the state Senate.

Other council members have differing views. Councilman Carter Burdette pointed out that state law and the court system have historically favored a landowner's right to produce oil and gas.

"When you start with that, it becomes a question of, to what extent are you going to restrict that right?" he said. "I think, hopefully, what the pipeline companies and the gas companies will do is put these pipelines where they're the least disturbance."

Other council members, such as Kathleen Hicks, believe the state government -- either the Railroad Commission or the Legislature -- needs to get involved.

"It's just another layer of the drilling we've got to be very engaged in," she said. "If the state's not going step up to the plate, we'll have to."

Any changes can't come too soon for Butler and his neighbors in Highland Hills.

"With all that land to put that pipe on, they decided to put it right next to the residents," he said.

Online resources

These Web sites have more information on pipelines:

The federal Office of Pipeline Safety:

ops.dot.gov

The nonprofit Pipeline Safety Trust:

www.pipelinesafetytrust.org