All ur backyards are belong to us

There's only one reason it's even within the realm of possibility that Helis Oil won't drill its proposed fracking well in St. Tammany Parish. And that reason has nothing to do with what the residents there might want. Rather, it has to do with how far afield the location is along the targeted "Tuscaloosa shale formation"

The wells range from 10,500 to 14,500 feet deep and cost about $13 million each to build. That’s compared with the $10 million average price tag to drill and complete a well in north Louisiana’s Haynesville Shale, a natural gas field that also runs under parts of Arkansas and Texas.

Although it controls potentially as much as 60,000 acres in St. Tammany, Helis has proposed drilling only a single well so far, at a depth of about 13,000 feet. But what has some industry experts scratching their heads isn’t the depth but the location of the well, dozens of miles southeast of the Tuscaloosa formation’s core.

Overall, interest in the shale drilling effort has surged in the past year, the experts say. Most of the acreage has been leased by a few key players, and by most accounts, Helis Oil & Gas is not one of them.

If it wasn't something of wildcat operation the objections of the local NIMBYs would amount to exactly nothing.  To get that all you have to do is look around at everywhere else in the USA where we are reasonably certain about the prospects of drilling.