This week, Ultra Resources confirmed that the company had purchased 18,000 acres of the Banning Lewis Ranch for $20 million. With the sale now complete, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and the City of Colorado Springs will need to determine whether the city land-use agreements related to the city’s 1988 annexation of the ranch should remain intact.

Confirming the purchase of the ranch, an Ultra spokeswoman said that the company expects to drill for oil and natural gas on the ranch. And it appears that the Banning Lewis deal may be just one part of Ultra’s plans for drilling in the area, as the company paid $1.67 million in July and August to Denver-based Pine Ridge Oil & Gas for leases on nearly 100,000 acres of land in eastern El Paso County and an exploratory well east of Fountain.

According to Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach, the sale of most of Banning Lewis Ranch to Ultra means “there is a real possibility that the Banning Lewis Ranch will not be built into residential and commercial neighborhoods as previously expected.”

In a statement, Colorado Springs City Attorney Chris Melcher said that the city will continue negotiations with Ultra “to reach a satisfactory resolution of the annexation issues, but if that effort is not successful the city intends to seek enforcement of all rights and responsibilities under the agreement in the Colorado bankruptcy court of Colorado state court.”

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Does the idea of getting a bonus check of $27,500 per acre sound too good to be true? Not to 4,000 North Texas property owners. When Vantage Energy came calling with checkbook in hand, they cashed in. Vantage, XTO, Chesapeake, Devon – major players paid astronimical sums and agreed to royalty rates as high as 25 percent in order to lock up mineral rights in Parker, Denton, Wise, and Tarrant County, home of Fort Worth. The ever-increasing size of the Barnett eventually engulfed an estimated 5,000 square miles and included hundreds of thousands of landowners.

The most intriguing aspect to the Barnett? Geologists have known about this field for most of the 20th century. It was only recently, however, that technology enabled production companies to produce enough gas to make wells economic.

So what does this mean to landowners elsewhere? A lot. The Barnett is one of more than a dozen shales across America now being tapped. Just last week Congressman Dan Boren was telling me about the booming economy in his district, Oklahoma’s 2nd. One of the primary engines driving Eastern Oklahoma’s 3 percent unemployment is exploration and production in the Woodford Shale. In the Fall 2008 issue, my brother Steve the CFA (not to be confused with my man Joe the Plumber) pointed out that Chesapeake Energy was planning to acquire the mineral rights to 13,000 acres of Louisiana timberland from International Paper for $263 million. That would be the Haynesville Shale. In New York, it’s the Marcellus Shale. In Indiana, it’s the New Albany Shale. In Michigan, the Antrim.

One thing we’ve all learned from higher oil prices is that natural gas is going to become an increasingly important component in our energy mix. And landowners everywhere need to know what this means to them.

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There’s an old saying: “It’s not news until it runs in the Times.” Thanks to this story, natural gas has officially become America’s energy darling.

Huge shales beds that have been long overlooked are now or will soon generate enormous incomes for producers, taxing entities, and of course landowners. Not only are black or brown shales found in 23 states, but the energy they produce, or more specifically, their emissions, are cleaner than either coal or oil. This is a development that will effect tens of thousands of landowners in all sections of the country, and the writer details the possibilities in an effective, enjoyable read. (Full disclosure: I have been writing for The Times since 1996.)

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