The board of trustees executive committee signed a letter of intent Friday to appoint Four Sevens Resources Co., Ltd. the university’s natural gas operator.The university will not sign a lease until all safety and security requirements have been considered, said Tracy Syler-Jones, assistant vice chancellor for marketing and communication.

“The next step is to complete a process of negotiating a lease that meets the university’s standards and is mutually acceptable by TCU and Four Sevens,” said Brian Gutierrez, TCU vice chancellor for finance and administration, in a press release Monday.

Negotiations of the lease are still being constructed, Syler-Jones said, and no date has been set for when drilling would start.

Before Four Sevens was confirmed as having exclusive rights to negotiate this lease, Colt Exploration Co., a leasing broker under contract with Four Sevens, placed fliers in the Colonial Park neighborhood that announced Four Sevens had already been awarded the gas lease. The placement of the fliers was premature, Gutierrez said.

According to the press release, the university began assessing the feasibility of drilling for natural gas on campus early last month because of the location atop the Barnett Shale, one of the largest natural gas reservoirs in the United States.