In the beginning of my landman voyage, my very own wife thought that "Barnett Shale" was a company. Infact, she called her father asking "he's working for some company called the Barnett Shale, it's weird, he just goes to talk to people about their 'mineral rights', gives them money, then comes home. Is this legal, daddy?" Interestingly enough, my father-in-law just so happens to have worked in the oil and gas industry for over 30 years. His response was simply, "Oh, that's perfect for him, and yes it's legal. He's a landman". The most humorous part of his response was the fact that he never informed her that "Barnett Shale" actually stood for the very "porous black shale rock" that produces natural gas (it actually took my wife 2 months to make that connection, a little personal inside humor).
So what is the Barnett Shale?
Figure 1
The Barnett Shale was created during the Late Mississippian Age (360 t0 325 million years ago). "By the end of the Pennsylvanian the Ouachita Thrust belt began encroaching into the present day North Texas area. The thrust belt owes its existence to the subduction of the South American plate under the North American plate. The Ouachita Thrust's emergence created the foreland basin along the front of the thrust. The maturation process was driven by displacement of hot fluids, from east to west, associated with the Ouachita Thrust. Figure 1 shows the extent of the Barnett in North Texas."As shown by Figure 1, the Quachita Thrust's geological outlay is in a Northeast to Southwest horizon, creating the shale rock formation known by geologists as the Barnett Shale (Barnett). Barnett creates a natural gas expansion from northern Colin County to northwest McLennan County (north-south).
(http://www.republicenergy.com/Articles/Barnett_Shale/Barnett.aspx)
