Bossier Parish puts mineral rights out for bid
By Drew Pierson • dpierson@gannett.com • July 18, 2008

Read Comments(3)Recommend (1)Print this page E-mail this article
Share this article: Del.icio.us Facebook Digg Reddit Newsvine What’s this?
Caddo and DeSoto parishes learned last week they would get millions of dollars through mineral rights leasing of their public land in the Haynesville Shale. Bossier Parish and Bossier City want to be next.



The Bossier Police Jury voted unanimously Thursday to put 746.4 acres out for bid, with companies to return in about a month with their offers.

"We're trying to get comparable results to Caddo and DeSoto," Patrick Jackson, Bossier Parish attorney, told the Police Jury.

Petrohawk Energy Corp. paid $28.7 million to the DeSoto Police Jury for 1,045 acres in that parish — more than $27,000 per acre.

Caddo received $17.6 million for its 585 acres in the bid from Baton Rouge-based Theophilus Oil, Gas and Land Services LLC.

Those up-front leasing bonuses do not include royalties DeSoto and Caddo will receive from the gas tapped from under the land — royalties that will be 27.5 percent and 30 percent, respectively.

It is too early to have a definitive list of projects on which Bossier would spend a leasing-rights windfall, Parish Administrator and Police Juror Bill Altimus said.

But he has an inkling where the money would go. "Knowing this jury, it'll probably be infrastructure."

Bossier Parish is not putting all of its land out for bid. The parish was approached by at least one natural gas company about certain properties the parish owns, and those are the ones Bossier has put out for bid.

Bossier City has not publicly identified which of its parcels might be the most valuable to natural gas companies. But it has recently inventoried all of its lands, which tally in the neighborhood of 3,300 acres. If even a quarter of that is worth leasing, the city could bring comparable leasing rights bonuses of its own.

Bossier City is still deciding how to put its land out for bid — let the Louisiana Mineral Board do it or go it alone, said city attorney Jimmy Hall, who attended the Police Jury meeting.

The resolution Bossier Parish passed Thursday would let the Police Jury explore that very option: whether to put the land out for bid or let the Mineral Board do it for the parish.

Altimus said he and parish staffers are weighing the pros and cons of each method. The Mineral Board takes some administrative costs if an entity uses its process to put mineral rights out to bid, for example, 10 percent of the total leasing bonuses granted to that entity.

The plus side of that equation, Altimus said, is the Mineral Board seems to be reaching some staggering deals quickly. DeSoto and Caddo both used the board.

And Altimus is cautious of using parish staffers to handle a leasing deal that would likely be out of the field of their expertise.

He also said he is impressed by a clause negotiated into DeSoto's and Caddo's contracts with Theophilius that would force the company to pay millions of dollars in "rent" if it does not begin drilling on those parishes' properties immediately.

As for Bossier City, Hall expects the city to decide within 30 days how to go about leasing its land.

The city is unsure what it would spend its mineral leasing bonus money on, city spokesman Mark Natale said, but that it would likely be "capital projects" such as construction or other physical things.