New La. film to examine natural gas drilling boom

• By ALEXANDYR KENT
• The Times (Shreveport), distributed by The Associated Press
• Published: Jul 5, 2009 - Page: 9A

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SHREVEPORT — For seven months, Gregory Kallenberg has been crafting a big story from inside a little executive suite in downtown Shreveport.

The producer-director and his team just finished the first cut of “Haynesville,” a documentary motion picture about the natural gas drilling boom in northwest Louisiana.

What started as an interest in personal stories about who’s winning and losing in the gas boom has grown into an examination of where the Haynesville Shale fits into the global energy crunch.

“We faced a huge learning curve coming into it,” Kallenberg said after spending another long day of fine-tuning editing choices.

“We were very fortunate in the sense that we began filming at the very beginning,” Kallenberg said.

Kallenberg and producer Mark Bullard have been tracking the story since spring 2008, just shortly after the Haynesville Shale came to public light.

The documentary not only profiles landowners but also includes analysis from industry professionals and critics who are keenly aware of the implications of recovering more than 230 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from deep within the earth.

The documentary doesn’t simply approach natural gas as a cleaner-burning solution to the world’s reliance on fossil fuels — coal and oil burn  dirtier — but instead approach it as an abundant, yet ultimately limited, resource that can bridge the world to cleaner power sources such as solar and wind.

Widespread use of “green” technologies may be 30 years away or more, experts have said.

“It’s easy to see yourself as green,” Bullard said. “With all the talk, you think it’s easy to latch onto it as a concept without latching into the details. ... It’s my consumption and my demand that keeps all of this in business.”

Kallenberg and his crew are testing the festival and distribution markets for “Haynesville.” If all goes well, it should be in theaters this fall.