Barnett Shale rig count is less than a shadow

The news was no surprise, but it was attention-getting: Nobody’s drilling for natural gas in the Barnett Shale.

You don’t have to have lived in Fort Worth or anywhere else in or near Tarrant County for long to remember when drilling rigs operated day and night, both in town and on the countryside.

Nor do you have to be an old-timer to remember natural gas company representatives working neighborhoods and country roads, getting property owners to sign mineral leases.

Plenty of people happily took lease bonus checks to the bank, even if later royalty checks for normal single-family home lots didn’t exactly build fortunes.

The peak came in 2008 when natural gas prices reached $12.78 per million British thermal units and 194 rigs were drilling in the 18-county Barnett Shale.

Prices and activity fell as the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques pioneered in the Barnett Shale helped produce a worldwide glut of oil and gas.

Barnett Shale drilling became a shadow of its old self, and now it’s not even that.

But the Barnett Shale isn’t going anywhere. Energy markets in the past have been cyclical, and it’s entirely possible that the Barnett Shale’s time will come again.

This story was originally published April 26, 2016 at 6:11 PM with the headline "Barnett Shale rig count is less than a shadow."