Banking on shale gas to preserve wetlands

Flanked by drilling rigs and pipelines, many of the wetlands feeding into the Sabine River in East Texas have been damaged by energy companies trying to extract gas from the Haynesville/Bossier Shale formation. The boom in shale oil and gas has offered salvation to mitigation banks, which have been battered by the housing bust, as many commercial and residential developments that might have needed mitigation were put on hold.
 
Last year the Army Corps approved 104 new banks, up 17 percent from 2009, for a total of 975 today. Of those new banks, 23 percent were in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. In states with little oil and gas drilling, some mitigation banks have struggled to stay afloat. Other banks see an opportunity in the turmoil of the housing market. 
 
Ecosystem Investment Partners, a private equity firm in Towson, Md., that has mitigation banks in Louisiana, Virginia, Delaware, and Montana, plans to buy land and begin the two- to three-year permitting process so it can be ready to sell credits when the economy turns around. “The drop in real estate prices is great for those of us who want to invest in the future,” says David Urban, the company’s director of operations.
 
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