Public invited to shale expo

For anyone wondering about the ins and outs of mineral right leases or what equipment is used at a gas well, now is your chance to learn.

The Fayetteville Shale Expo will be 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Conway Sports Center in the Don Owen Recreation Complex on Lower Ridge Road. The event is free and open to the public.

Johnny Adams, chair of the board of the Conway Area Chamber of Commerce, said, "We're really looking forward to the event. We wanted Conway to be known as the center of the shale play. Not only will it be good for vendors, but it will be an educational event for the public. It's entirely made up of oil and gas companies and vendors that support them. If you've seen a truck going down the road and want to know what it does or what's in that tanker truck, you'll be able to know."

He said members of the chamber visited the Barnett Shale Expo in Fort Worth at the Fort Worth Convention Center on March 28.

"It featured the same thing we're going to have booths, speakers and educational sessions. We got to observe what they were doing. It was sponsored by the Fort Worth Chamber. Their people helped us," Adams said. He said the chamber hopes to make the Fayetteville Shale Expo an annual event.

Mary Margaret Satterfield, director of events for the chamber, said the expo will start with a community breakfast from 8 to 10 a.m. There will be hour-long educational seminars throughout the day on environmental topics, land and mineral rights issues, and subjects such as taxes and careers in natural gas.

The expo will involve 30 booths all involving natural gas companies and their supporting vendors, she said. There will also be outdoor exhibits for people to look at large equipment and learn how it works.

"The Fayetteville Shale Play has such an economic impact, not just on Conway, but on the central Arkansas area," Satterfield said. "People have questions, whether they are environmental, how it effects them economically, or what's in that truck driving down the road."

The presenting sponsors of the expo are Chesapeake Energy, Southwestern Energy Company and XTO Energy.

Chad Russell, vice president of operations for the chamber, said, "There's a lot of misconceptions publicly about the Fayetteville Shale, and companies like Chesapeake and XTO and Southwestern Energy want to do everything they can to dispel those misconceptions and educate people on how did it get here, how can this area benefit from it, how can people get a job in this industry, how can people get a degreed level of knowledge in this industry."

Kathy Wyrick, vice president of marketing, said, "We are extremely pleased with the variety of breakout sessions, which will occur throughout the day. For those wanting to gain a better understanding of the Fayetteville Shale, we will offer a Fayetteville Shale 101 session by Dr. Ed Ratchford, senior petroleum geologist for Arkansas Geological Survey."

A highlight of some of the available sessions follows: