The benefits of Barnett Shale natural gas production to its 24 North Texas host counties are often cited and easily appreciated. It's hard for anyone not to like money in their pockets and thousands of jobs for the local economy.

Less appreciated is the potential for air pollution, pipeline hazards and groundwater contamination that these wells bring, not to mention the temporary discomforts of noise and truck traffic during the drilling phase.

The easiest thing is to embrace the positives and discount the negatives. Add a constant, well-funded and well-executed campaign by gas companies promoting a positive image for their industry. Accommodating the exploitation of this natural resource becomes the likeliest of outcomes.

North Texans must make sure this exploitation does as little environmental harm and disrupts as few lives as possible. But even that statement is easy to accept and few, including the gas companies, would disagree.

What may be the most difficult thing to see in the rush to cash in on the Barnett Shale is the significant threat to individual rights that the drilling boom poses. Despite the efforts of many public officials to protect those rights through local drilling ordinances and state laws, oil and gas regulation in Texas favors "drill, baby, drill."

Few people who are not directly connected to the oil and gas industry can devote the time necessary to determine whether this regulatory environment can be improved. But like it or not, the toll for extracting natural gas from the Barnett Shale will be paid, either through regulatory vigilance or degeneration of North Texans' rights and quality of life.

One regulatory change before the Texas Railroad Commission illustrates the point. The commissioners are considering a formal rule that would make it easier for gas companies to drill despite the wishes of some property owners whose rights would be negatively affected.

The change, detailed by energy writer Jack Z. Smith in a Star-Telegram report published Sunday, would approve a routine practice in which the commission staff allows drilling within a few feet of unleased property, even taking gas from its owners without requiring notice or an opportunity to object.

The only restriction is that the horizontal well bore not be perforated to draw gas from any point closer than 330 feet from the property line.

The proposal, for which the public comment period closes at noon today, justifies the practice in three ways:
Gas companies have gravitated to the so-called "no-perforation zones" as an end-run around property owners, especially in urban areas, who won't accept their lease terms.

When property owners have protested under current rules and showed up in Austin for scheduled hearings, companies have aborted the process by filing last-minute plans to exclude those properties through no-perforation zones. That, the rule change says, causes too much work for the commission staff.

Formal hearings to allow protesting property owners a chance to have their say are expensive, costing the companies anywhere from $3,000 to $50,000 or more.

Moving ahead with drilling allows owners who have signed leases to sell their minerals. This reasoning comes despite information that no-perforation zones can lead to significant waste, which the commission is obligated to avoid.

The proposed rule bends too far to accommodate gas companies at the expense of individual rights. The commission should not adopt it but should return to the process of allowing property owners to air their cases to a hearing examiner, despite the cost to gas companies.