Oil and water still don't mix

"You can't believe the flood of money that's pouring into San Antonio!" That's Steve talking, a close friend and an accountant with his finger on the financial pulse of the nation's seventh largest city. At a time when many other communities are struggling to make ends meet, the Alamo City is flush. The source of this new pelf lies a couple of hours to its south, down I-35 and US 281, deep in the brush country of south Texas. To be more precise, its origins lie 8,000 feet below the rolling coastal plain, in the gas-and-oil deposits locked in the Eagle Ford Shale formation; this seam runs beneath more 20 counties that stretch from the Rio Grande Valley north and east into central Texas. To tap those resources, major energy companies (and smaller ones, too), are offering upwards of seven-figures for an annual lease, eye-popping dollars for hardscrabble ranchers who in the past have had to take a second or third job just to hold on to their lands, let alone maintain their livestock operations. To that kind of payday, Steve observed, "not many are saying no."...more