Gathering Company Cutting Off
Gas To Panhandle Landowners

SHAMROCK, Texas — I.A. Brooks has spent the last 40 years here taking care of his registered Herefords. He and wife Laverne worked hard, long years to pay for the small ranch in Wheeler County. It wasn't easy.

There were times, as with most small livestock operations, when Brooks had to work at other jobs. He worked at Shamrock Lumber Yard and White House Lumber Company in town. Brooks also spent 28 years working at the local carbon black plant.

"My wife and I paid for every bit of it," Brooks says of his place northeast of Shamrock.

In January, they will have been married 50 years.

Though they suffered through drouths, blizzards and the ups and downs of the cattle market, the couple at least were assured they could heat their home. At least, that is, until they got a letter from a natural gas management company late in the summer.

In August, Gruy Petroleum Management Company sent a letter to area residents tied to their Panoma Gas Gathering System, notifying them that as of Oct. 1, the residents would no longer have access to the gas lines. The company claims that hydrogen sulfide has increased in the natural gas from the wells, and that poses a serious threat to the safety of the residents and their families.

Brooks, who will celebrate his 72nd birthday on Oct. 1, has used natural gas from a well on his land during the four decades he's lived on the place. Gas from the well for home use was part of his contract with the gathering company. Now with higher gas prices, he says, the company is threatening to take him off the gas line.

"They told me in the letter that I got that it was dangerous," he says. "It never was before when gas was about a dollar. When it got up to about five, it got more serious. It's peculiar."

Brooks says he's convinced that the gas company doesn't care about him.

"What it boils down to is just the plain old dollar bill," Brooks says.

"Hydrogen sulfide is not going to start killing people Oct. 1," says Pampa attorney John Mann, who's representing many of the interest holders in a lawsuit filed this month in 31st District Court in Wheeler.

Wayne Hughes with the Amarillo-based Panhandle Producers and Royalty Owners Association says a number of gathering companies across the country are taking similar actions based on a lawsuit in Oklahoma that held the gathering companies liable for harm caused by such connection to residences.

Natural gas that has been processed, industry sources explain, has a chemical added to give it an odor. Gas from the wellhead does not. It is possible that a gas leak could fill a residence without being noticed.

Hughes says similar actions are being taken by gas gathering and pipeline companies across the nation.

In the lawsuit that Brooks, Dale Adams, Butch Cogburn and Norma Curry are bringing, they are asking for a temporary restraining order and a temporary and permanent injunction to stop the company from interfering with their use of the natural gas. A hearing on the matter is set for this week.

The Panoma Gas Gathering System covers parts of Gray, Wheeler, Donley and Collingsworth counties in the Texas Panhandle and Beckham and Greer Counties in Western Oklahoma.

Mann says that when the wells were initially drilled, natural gas was cheap and the gathering company, as part of its agreement with landowners having interests in the wells from which the company was gathering gas, allowed the residents free use of the fuel.

"All these old leases back then when the wells were drilled say that the people had the right to heat their houses, light their houses with the natural gas from the wells on their property," Mann says. "Some of the leases said they had the right to heat their barns."

"It's in our contracts that we've got it," Brooks says. "I guess I'm raised up from an old school. I grew up at a time when you gave a man your word and shook hands on it, that's all it took."

With natural gas prices above five dollars per thousand cubic feet, Mann insists the decision to cut off gas from the interest owners is a financial decision, not a safety decision.

"It is a fraud that's being perpetrated on interest owners," he says.

To make matters worse, he adds, the company picked the late fall, just before winter, to take action.

"Didn't they pick a nice time to do this."

Mann says the gathering company is trying to get people worried about getting heat in the winter.

"They don't have a right to do that," he contends.

In its letter, Gruy Petroleum is offering compensation to convert any resident to an alternative fuel, but Mann says the compensation they are offering won't pay for two years of heating.

"We're not going to stand for it," Mann says.

"I hope it doesn't get nasty," Brooks adds.

He says there are other ranchers near McLean, just west of here, who seem to be much angrier over the situation than he is.

"They're all bowed up," Brooks says. "Everybody's hit hard right now anyway by the drouth that we've had."

Brooks says the drouth has forced him to cull his herd deeply.

"I run cattle," he says, "but I've sold out, down to just a handful of cows now."

Looking out across his pasture of improved grasses, he says it's been a dry year.

"It's pretty when we get some rain," Brooks says.

Even if they lose their suit, Brooks says, it won't be the end of the world.

"I was in Korea," he explains. "I thought that was the end of the world."