Former Shreveport Country Club may become a natural gas drilling site. What's next?

• BY LIZ SWAINE | Staff writer  https://www.shreveportbossieradvocate.com/business

Property owners near the former Shreveport Country Club just off Greenwood Road should soon be getting a notice of a public hearing that will alert them to natural gas drilling coming to their neighborhood.

APEX Natural Gas, LLC, a Houston-based exploration and production company, is proposing to make a unit of an area that includes the former golf course and the residential area around it. According to information provided to the Louisiana Office of Conservation, APEX intends to drill and send lateral lines north under Cross Lake to just beyond Interstate 220.

Those lateral lines, said Department of Energy and Natural Resources Communications Director Patrick Courreges, could be up to 20,000 feet; more than 3.5 miles.

The unit map for the Shreveport Country Club site in Shreveport, La. 

Courtesy Louisiana Office of Conservation

It is the latest urban drilling site in Shreveport and Bossier City, but it won't be the last, Courreges said.

He said activity is far less than it was at the height of the Haynesville Shale in 2007-2008, but in the early days it was out of sight, out of mind.

"You know, so much of that was out in the piney woods. You had all your billionaires, you know, folks who had a bunch of property they inherited from whoever, and all of a sudden it's worth real money."

Courreges said with the rural property already leased, the new leasing — and some drilling — is moving closer to urban centers where people don't know what to expect.

"This is new to them. They have their concerns. I've been up in front of the Caddo Parish board (Commission) before to talk to them about, you know, how we do it and what we do."

Courreges says the upcoming public hearing, the date of which has not yet been set, is only a unit hearing to allow property owners to state why they should be included in the unit and have more of a monetary share.

He said while the employees of the Office of Conservation will listen to other concerns or complaints at the unit hearing, they will not have jurisdiction over them. He said that "quality of life" issues such as too much dust or noise or construction activity will generally be handled by the city or parish.

"We will never tell somebody they can't come to a public hearing and say what they got to say. But the folks at that hearing aren't really empowered to do anything about those concerns. They're only empowered to draw that unit boundary."

Courreges admits that in the past there have been some complaints.

He said it has been his experience that operators respond relatively quickly with sound walls or other methods to mitigate problems once there are complaints; however, he said residents with issues should get in touch with the Office of Conservation or their parish officials.

The 218-acre country club closed in 2016 and was donated to Denny Duron and his Winner's Circle International nonprofit. It was listed for sale for $4.3 million but plans for residential development never moved forward. 

Courreges said there will be activity on the site, just perhaps not what was envisioned. 

"When you get right down to it, it is basically a construction site, so you've got a lot of heavy equipment, got some noise, got some dust, just like any other thing you're building."

Email Liz Swaine at Liz.Swaine@theadvocate.com.