KSLA News 12 Shreveport, Louisiana |Thousands arrive for first-ever Shale Expo

Thousands arrive for first-ever Shale Expo

By Jeff Ferrell - bio | email

SHREVEPORT, LA (KSLA) - Thousands of people converged upon the Shreveport Convention Center to learn more about what's already become a billion dollar industry locally:  The Haynesville Shale.

Friday's (11/21) ‘Shale Expo' featured 120 companies, many from out of state looking to help educate the public and meet potential clients.  In fact, many of these companies have now set-up shop permanently in the area.

Applause rang out with the official opening of the first-ever Shale Expo, after Shreveport Mayor Cedric Glover and Bossier City Mayor Lorenz "Lo" Walker together cut the ribbon to start the event.  At least hundreds of people had gathered near the entrance to the vacuous first floor hall inside the convention center in Downtown Shreveport.

Organizers described to us one primary focus of the Shale Expo as that of building trust.  Jim Mabus with the Shreveport Chamber of Commerce elaborated,  "we want to make sure people don't have any apprehension and they do have as much understanding as they can get out of something like this, what's going on."

We decided to walk around and check out the exhibits and booths to meet some of these company leaders.  "Cement comes in right here," pointed Chris Bigbey.  He works for Liberty Pressure Pumping out of Longview, Texas and showed us one of their two rigs he insisted sets their company apart from the competition.  "This is a cement pump.  We go out and pump cement jobs on  the oil rigs."

Another shale-related contractor is a company called "Cadre" based in Houston, Texas, which recently opened an office in Bossier City.  Vice President of Sales Matt Rosser told us, "we  basically come in before the rigs come in.  We build locations.  So, we'll put down rock, we'll put down soil, cement."

We met a local real estate agent, Carolyn Grimsley, who hoped a few of the expo classes might offer some insight into issues involving property owned by her own mother.  "If they run the pipeline across the farm how will that impact?  And then, I was reading about the situation with the water.  So, I'm curious to see what they have to say about that."

The Haynesville Shale covers 3-point-2 million acres in East Texas and Northwest Louisiana.  That may explain why 18 chambers of commerce helped organize the event along with six of the major oil and gas companies involved in the Haynesville Shale play.

Before the start of the expo, noted economist Ray Perryman of Texas delivered the keynote speech before a crowd of 800-people during the "energy luncheon."  He talked about the comparison between the Barnett Shale near Fort Worth, Texas and the Haynesville Shale.  "If you can take an area of 3-million people and become eight or nine percent of its economy in five years, six years, think what it can do to an economy with the population base that you got here."