When I started out the “Haynesville” project, it was a fairly small mission: Follow the lives of people in northwestern Louisiana as they experienced a major energy find called the Haynesville Shale.
The lives we were lucky enough to follow are amazing – a single mom who is a community and environmental activist, a African American reverend looking for the Haynesville Shale to fund his school and an overnight millionaire ruminating about what will happen to his land. It was once we all started to realize the scale of the Haynesville as an energy find, that we realized that this story was much bigger than the original mission.
With the Haynesville Shale firmly established as the largest natural gas find in the U.S. (and now, maybe the world), the story became as much about the energy as the people. This find could possibly change the way we look at energy. In a time where coal is totally screwing up our environment and oil is a volatile commodity that is largely out of our control, the Haynesville could help spearhead the move to cleaner, more stable sources. This is really important because we finally have a shot at replacing coal and diminishing our dependence on oil. With an abundant supply of natural gas and a good jump on a renewable energy future, the combination could win us a bright energy future.
With that in mind, we constructed a film that will show everyone what that energy future could be, while showing our audience what happens at the ground level when a find like this is exploited. We hope you walk away from “Haynesville” understanding the potential of this energy find while also understanding its human impact. And that’s how our view of the Haynesville Shale got to be so big.
-Gregory Kallenberg, Director of Haynesville