That’s because Williams is splitting… into two companies.

On one hand, Williams will continue its 100-year heritage as a premier owner and operator of natural gas pipelines and infrastructure.

On the other hand, there’s the exploration and production business, which has a history dating back nearly three decades, starting in New Mexico’s San Juan Basin and broadening to places like the Barnett Shale. That’s the business I support. It’ll now be called WPX.

The separation of integrated entities is a trend in the oil and gas sector these days. Marathon did it. Questar did it. Tesoro did it. El Paso was working on it. And ConocoPhillips is doing it, just to name a few.

The moves, in part, give businesses that were once in a larger corporate format a broader ability to, well, basically grow.

It also helps investors better value what they hold in their shares of stock. It also gives management teams a tighter overall focus when it comes to doing what they do best.

In our specific case at Williams, it takes a lot of dollars and dough to build pipelines and drill oil and gas wells. Now, both companies (Williams and WPX) will each have their own access to capital.

As our CEO said a while back, “Williams has generated significant value by operating as an integrated natural gas company.

“As we look to the future, though, we are convinced that the capital efficiency created by separating into two distinct investment opportunities will allow shareholders to realize greater value.”

So, you’ll still see me around town, but my hard hat will have a new logo. And if you’re interested in all the nuts and bolts and legal details pertaining to our spinoff, you can learn more right here.

Officially, our official start as WPX is expected to happen real soon. As we assimilate the spinoff, we’ll be reworking this website, too, and reintroducing it down the road as “WPXInTheBarnett.”

From all of us at our Fort Worth office, we’re wishing you and all of yours a Happy New Year as we prepare to start our own new era as WPX Energy.

Rig towers like this tend to create lots of talk. See what the NY Times had to say this time.

There’s an op-ed piece in the New York Times that you just gotta see if you follow our industry  — even from a casual interest to downright opposition.

It offers the kind of balance that helps foster, facilitate and advance productive conversations in coffee houses and living rooms across the country.

And it wasn’t written, penned or promoted by any kind of industry spokesman. The author is David Brooks, an op-ed Times columnist since 2003.

Just to arouse your curiosity (and because we can’t republish the Times’ content in its entirety), here’s an excerpt:

“The U.S. is polarized between ‘drill, baby, drill’ conservatives, who seem suspicious of most regulation, and some environmentalists, who seem to regard fossil fuels as morally corrupt and imagine we can switch to wind and solar overnight.”

Brooks goes on to say that the “inherent risks (of industry) can be managed if there is a reasonable regulatory regime, and if the general public has a balanced and realistic sense of the costs and benefits.”

But don’t take our word for the thoughtful bent behind this piece. Please, read it for yourself. You can do so right here.

A new poll shows strong support for energy development.

A new national poll  finds that the vast majority of consumers support an expansion of energy projects as a way to boost job growth among American workers.

The data was compiled by the American Consumer Institute Center for Citizen Research, who surveyed 1,000 people nationwide.

You can see all the raw data here.  A press release with additional perspective is available, as well.

A few of the highlights include:

• 89% of consumers favor expanding the number of energy projects in the U.S.
• 93% believe that investing in more U.S. energy projects will create more jobs
• 68% believe that investing in more U.S. energy production will lower energy prices  for consumers

Oil and gas activity supports more than 100,000 jobs in the regional economy.

A new study commissioned by the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce has a lot to say about the economic boost provided by Barnett Shale development.

For 2011 alone, oil and gas activity poured $11.1 billion into the regional economy while supporting some 100,268 jobs across 24 counties.

So where does that money go? Well, for starters, cities, and school districts in the region are slated to receive an estimated $730.6 million in additional fiscal revenues this year from Barnett Shale development and production.

And if you look back over the past decade, the numbers get even bigger. From 2001-2011, the cumulative economic benefits added up to $65.4 billion, including $5.3 billion in local tax receipts and another $5.8 billion to the state.

The study was conducted by The Perryman Group. It’s president, Ray Perryman, has a PhD in economics from Rice University, a bachelor’s degree in math from Baylor and more than 30 years of experience in financial analysis.

The findings also showed that 38.5 percent of the incremental growth in the regional economy over the past decade has been the result of Barnett Shale activity.

You can read the entire report online. Media coverage also is available from the Star-Telegram and the Dallas Business Journal.

One New Yorker is touting all the tax revenue generated by shale gas for schools and municipalities in North Texas.

Could it be that New Yorkers are wrestling with a case of “Texas envy?”

One former resident of the Empire State certainly is, and he explains why in Investors Business Daily.

The bottom line? It’s all about realizing the economic benefits from developing the natural gas in the shale deposits that are deep in the earth. 

You can see the editorial online.  In our mind, it’s a quick, easy, insightful read. A couple of his points about the Barnett Shale especially bear repeating.

Specifically, he cites job creation (53,200 in the Metroplex) and tax revenue ($238 million for municipalities and school districts in North Texas) from 2008-2010.  

Our local wells are doing their part. In 2010, we paid $3.1 million in severance taxes and $4.6 million in ad valorem taxes across our operating area that stretches from south of Fort Worth to Flower Mound and Lewisville.

Additionally, we’ve distributed more than $80,000 in education and school-related grants over the past few years at Flower Mound High School, Marcus High School, Lewisville High School and to the Lewisville Education Foundation.

Intern Claire Tolson helped support the work at one of our wells in Lewisville.

With the start of school approaching, more than 60 summer interns at Williams are making their way back to college campuses across the country.

Our bumper crop for 2011 included several with local ties, including Jacob Herzog from Flower Mound, Brian McGuire at our office in Fort Worth and Claire Tolson who worked on the drilling plan for a well in Lewisville.

Jacob graduated from Marcus High School in 2008 and is pursuing a degree in chemical engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.

Brian, who worked in our environmental department, attends the University of Central Oklahoma where he’s studying industrial safety.

Claire is a petroleum engineering major at the University of Oklahoma. And for her, oil and gas is a family affair.

Her grandfather took the same major at the same school before becoming a drilling rig contractor.

As a soon-to-be junior at OU and member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, this was Claire’s first internship. 

Over the summer, she worked at mastering the language in drilling reports that now gives her real world experience when she returns to school.

She also led the “spud meeting” for our Chen B6 well in Lewisville, which is the meeting where our field consultants, vendors and drilling team plan how to drill the well, what bits to use, etc.

When asked what grandpa thinks about her accomplishments, Claire says that “he loves it.”

Before the internship, Claire thought she wanted to pursue reservoir engineering since it was primarily office-based.  The on-site field experience she received this summer, however, has opened her eyes to other possibilities. 

And now, she can also talk shop with her grandfather on a whole new level.

“It’s allowed us to share a common interest,” she says. “We’ve been talking about the newer rigs and what’s changed since he was an engineer.”

Felderhoff Rig No. 26

You’re right. There’s something different about the rig we have running right now in Lewisville. It’s gone green, at our request.

We’ve been working with the rig owner, Felderhoff, to convert the rig’s generators to run simultaneously on two fuels (diesel and natural gas) instead of just one (diesel).

It’s called “bi-fuel” technology. We think of it as simply cleaner and greener. That’s because using natural gas helps reduce exhaust emissions.

We believe it’s the first drilling rig of its kind in the Barnett Shale, but it’s not the first application of this technology.

For example, the application is being used outside the energy sector for generators at a Florida hospice and at a high-rise office complex in Toronto, Ontario.

One of the brains behind adapting the technology to our Barnett Shale rig is Sean Berzas, who joined Williams three years ago.  Overall, he has 17 years of experience in the industry.

Regarding the project, Berzas says, “I’ve been waiting for the right opportunity with available natural gas to utilize this technology and use clean-burning natural gas, reduce engine emissions and reduce truck traffic.  It’s a win for the communities and us all.”

Under the bi-fuel model, the rig we’re using will generate between a third and a half of its power from natural gas – a substantially cleaner-burning energy alternative than diesel.

Felderhoff is already familiar with emissions controls. They’re the only Energy Star rated drilling company.

We’re expecting to reduce our diesel consumption by more than 350 gallons a day, which also reduces the need for trucks carrying diesel to our drill site.

This is some of the equipment that was added to complete the bi-fuel modification process.

So can the fuel-combo be used on all rigs? Not for now. In a practical sense, it comes down to logistics.

For us, we already have pipelines in place near our local drilling pads that can bring natural gas from our nearby wells.

And before the gas ever gets to the rig, it is metered and essentially “sold” so that all of our mineral owners and the appropriate taxing entities are properly compensated, too.

For the foreseeable future, the rig will be working for us in Lewisville and Flower Mound.

“While a handful of rigs in the U.S. are using this bi-fuel technology, we’re thrilled to be the first in the Barnett to use it,” says Leslie Anderson, Williams’ operations manager.

Leslie Anderson

I say “newly named” because he’s not new to Willliams – or the area.

Leslie Anderson has been with Williams since 2006. That’s when he joined our brand new Barnett Shale office in Fort Worth.

Now, he brings more than 30 years of industry experience to accompany his new title.

Most recently, he was in charge of the natural gas production from our wells in the southern section of the Barnett Shale. For us, that encompasses our operations south of Fort Worth in towns such as Burleson.

Prior to Williams, Leslie held a variety of positions with ARCO and Forest Oil in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, California, Colorado and Louisiana.

He’s a registered professional engineer by trade (like others on our local staff) and has a petroleum engineering degree from Texas Tech.

Leslie has a long history in horizontal drilling, which is the technique we use to tap the natural gas that is “trapped” in underground Barnett Shale rocks.

In 1981, he worked on an ARCO project team in New Mexico that drilled a 700-foot, short-radius, horizontal well using flexible drill collars. It was the first project of its kind in the area.

But Leslie he has never forgotten his first summer job as a teenager near his hometown of Odessa.

He worked as a field-hand clearing mesquite tree roots from a pipeline trench that was 2-feet wide by 5-feet deep.

He recalls that “the trench ran as far as you could see in both directions” and “the axes they gave us just caused the roots to bounce back at us when we tried to chop them.”

On a personal level, Leslie enjoys carpentry, fishing, swimming and adventure novels. He and his wife, Jenny, have two grown children and one granddaughter.

Lastly, our Regional VP, Tony Silvestri, had this to say about appointing Leslie to take the top local spot.

“We’ve made considerable investments in the Barnett Shale since 2005. Leslie is the right one to lead the various disciplines that maintain our wells and support facilities here.”

An emergency simulation recently took place in Argyle, and residents will be pleased to know their town’s first responders rose to the occasion.

Williams Production Gulf Coast completed its emergency response drill on May 24 and Price Petro, the Argyle Fire District and the Argyle Police Department were all involved in the exercise.

Argyle town manager Lyle Dresher said it went very well.

“[It was] excellent,” Dresher said. “The exercise conducted was similar to other disaster/emergency preparedness drills conducted throughout the Metroplex, i.e. DFW Airport, and various larger municipalities whereby drills are conducted by emergency services, schools, and other agencies.

“Major hurricane, tornado, flood, and grass fire events have prompted emergency services providers to conduct incident command exercises/drills in order to be better prepared should incidents occur not only for the health and safety of citizens but also for the safety of first responders.”

Dresher said the simulated exercise was comprised of a vehicular accident whereby a car was simulated to crash into a natural gas line near a gas separator unit.

“First responders were called, responded, established an incident command location, and coordination and resolution of the incident was completed,” Dresher said.

You can see more community stories at www.crosstimbersgazette.com.

Excerpt: “Only a decade ago Texas oil engineers hit upon the idea of combining two established technologies to release natural gas trapped in shale formations.”

As the Journal points out, there are clear results to help measure whether that idea was successful.

Excerpt: “Prior to the shale breakthrough, U.S. natural gas reserves were in decline, prices exceeded $15 per MMBtu…Today, proven reserves are the highest since 1971, prices have fallen close to $4…”

You can see the Journal’s expansive piece in its entirety online.

With regard to hydraulic fracturing, Williams was one of the first companies to voluntarily disclose information about the chemical additives used in our wells.

You can see the data for our Barnett Shale wells at www.fracfocus.org. Water and sand comprised about 99.7 percent of the “frac fluid” for each of our local wells.