Fracking Standoff in Texas: One Woman's Struggle to Stop Drilling on Her Family's Land
Until she was nine, Frances Shure lived on a ranch in Anderson County, in the piney woods and rolling hills of East Texas. She inherited mineral rights in that area from her grandfather, a man she calls a "wheeling and dealing and poker-playing Texan." She also holds mineral rights a few counties south in Madison County. Both counties lie on the edge of the Barnett Shale formation, which contains large deposits of natural gas.
In January of last year, she was approached by an agent for a petroleum land management company. Such companies specialize in securing mineral rights for oil and gas corporations. In Shure's case, the land agent wanted her to sign a lease permitting gas exploration via hydraulic fracturing, also known as "fracking," in her Anderson County holdings.
A year later, she is still refusing to sign.
That wasn't the case in 2006, when Shure was first approached by a land agent to sign over her mineral rights in Madison County. Even though she wasn't comfortable with it, she signed the lease. She'd done some research and consulted with an environmental lawyer who had worked with environmentalists in Texas.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/texas-fracking-standoff
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