Natural gas leaders reflect on success, obstacles to future growth during TCU summit

No productive wells or pipelines laid in the area when the leaders of Fort Worth’s Four Sevens Oil Company first considered drilling gas wells in Tarrant County. The risk scared off even George Mitchell, the “Father of the Barnett Shale,” who didn’t want to come that far south and drill in the urban environment, said Larry Brogdon, the company’s geologist at the time. “Each municipality needed to be educated on drilling,” Brogdon said. “We would take them on field trips, trying to get them comfortable and see what was going on. Working in an urban environment was very, very challenging.” Brogdon joined other leaders of Four Sevens Oil Company on March 21 to reflect on the company’s journey as Texas Christian University’s Ralph Lowe Energy Institute hosted its 2024 Global Energy Symposium. The school honored the Fort Worth wildcatters with the 2024 TCU Legends in Energy award for their work pioneering the development of the Barnett Shale, particularly in Tarrant County.

Mitchell Energy had pioneered the production of shale gas north of Tarrant County using horizontal drilling and fracking, but didn’t want to move into an urban environment, said Brogdon. “The way you made yourself competitive is you went in and got the drill sites, and the pipeline right away. Once you had that, you controlled the gas, so you really knocked the competition out of the game,” said Brad Cunningham, also at Four Sevens and the son of the late Dick Lowe, one of the company’s partners. “That’s what we did. We went and carpet bombed this place with drill sites.” Four Sevens acquired acreage from Haslet down to Burleson, eventually obtaining 26,000 acres for mineral rights in Tarrant and Johnson counties. They sold the acreage to Fort Worth’s XTO Energy for leases for $155 million, then acquired more land and sold it to Chesapeake Energy for $845 million in 2007. Hunter Enis, a former Horned Frogs quarterback and one of the partners at Four Sevens, said the company’s ties to TCU, and football in particular, were key to securing the leases. Along with Enis, Lowe also played football for the Horned Frogs.