Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Are proposed Fort Worth pipelines the new Trinity Trees?

By Steve Smith of West and Clear

For those in Westcliff preparing to attend the Chesapeake/Midstream Tour de Pipeline tonight, let me help calibrate your expectations based on my experiences Monday night at the Sycamore Recreation Center in East Fort Worth.

It’s just kind of … weird.

For some reason, I expected … I dunno, dialogue? An exchange of ideas? A presentation? But it was pretty much your basic heavily managed public relations event – glossy posters, cookies, bottles of water and lots of one-way communication. Ask anything too challenging and you get a thoughtful sounding, “That’s a good question.” In other words, I’m not going to answer that.

The whole thing had this tense, antiseptic quality. Everyone seemed nervous and concerned about staying on message. Why? Why was everyone gripping it so tight?

Well, it seems that the gas drilling companies in general and Chesapeake in particular are getting worried about the entire pipeline issue, especially in the wake of last month’s public meeting at City Hall. Although the Task Force basically dismissed the public’s comments outright at the subsequent meeting on June 17, an interesting thing happened after the Task Force started talking pipelines — suddenly and inexplicably, City Attorney Sarah Fullenwider tabled discussion of the issue. Coincidentally, that’s when this whole Tour de Pipeline idea started rolling.

OK, so what?

Here’s where it gets really odd. Suddenly, there is a City Council/Task Force workshop scheduled on August 7 to discuss pipelines. What’s on the agenda? No one knows. Who is scheduled to speak? No one knows.

What’s going on?

It appears that Mayor Moncrief is once again riding to the rescue of his friends in gas industry. Once the Task Force started talking about wet gas vs. dry gas, dehydrators and odorizing the gas, it was becoming clear that there really wasn’t a technology dodge in this argument. The technology is there, it’s all about cost. Dry gas pipelines and odorizing the gas would cost them more money than they want to spend.

So, combined with the eminent domain issue, there is an image problem beginning to come up. And Mayor Mikey, if anything, is image conscious.

So, as with the Trinity Trees issue, Mayor Mikey is going to make everything alright. Except this is a little harder issue to spin. When people are seeing property in their neighborhoods condemned to make was for a pipeline, it’s a little different deal.

Are pipelines the new Trinity Trees? Maybe not. Pipelines may be bigger.

Pegasus News content partner - West and Clear

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• Pegasus News Week in View: Next Generation Edition (July 17, 2008)

See more stories in:

• Environmental Issues > Barnett Shale
• Politics and Government > City Government > Fort Worth