SAN ANTONIO -- Derry Gardner owns a 200-acre ranch in La Salle County. He got a bundle to drill under his land.
"About 15 to 25 hundred dollars per acre," Gardner explained. "I have friends and neighbors that have become millionaires."
That's because Gardner's property sits on the Eagle Ford Shale, an oil and natural gas field just 45 minutes south of San Antonio. It's a coveted gold mine for companies to drill for gas, and landowners are getting paid to sell their drilling rights.
"Those bonuses have gone as high as two to three thousand dollars an acre," explains Pete Bommer with Abraxas Energy Partners. "There's a tremendous amount of money flowing into landowners' pockets."
The drilling frenzy has attracted companies to set up shop in energy boomtowns. They're partnering with schools and workforce groups to train, and create jobs.
"There's going to be thousands of new jobs down here," explains Justin Furnace with the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association. "High paying jobs from the front end, engineering, law, land, geology, to trade skills to drilling rigs."
