Follow-up study highlights rural gas potential worldwide
GRAND JUNCTION—Colorado Mesa University is partnering with state agencies from Colorado and Utah on a $117,000 report aimed at helping the states promote natural gas produced in the Piceance and Uintah basins.
CMU’s Unconventional Energy Center has committed a $50,000 grant to the report. The paper will build on an earlier report, which focused on opportunities for exporting gas from western Colorado’s Piceance Basin to Asian markets, including via a proposed Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas export terminal in Oregon.
The new report will focus on better understanding the combined resource potential of the Piceance Basin and Utah’s Uintah Basin, in addition to opportunities for marketing the basins’ gas, whether through LNG exports or domestically. It also will identify potential obstacles and opportunities for interstate collaboration. In addition, the report will review available gas pipeline and processing infrastructure, best management practices of those companies operating in the basins, and ways to address cost structure and competition issues faced by operators.
The report is being pursued as a result of an agreement reached late last year between the Colorado Energy Office and the Utah Governor’s Office of Energy Development, which created the Western States Rural Natural Gas Initiative. The collaboration is intended to pursue economic opportunities provided by world-class natural gas assets to boost rural economies and domestic energy security.
“From there, we’ll develop the next steps of advocacy and gubernatorial partnership between our states and figure out what direction we want to go next,” said Kathleen Staks, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office.
Her office and the counterpart office in Utah have committed $10,000 apiece to the report’s development. Local oil and gas producer Terra Energy Partners has provided $5,000, and Dominion Energy, which operates in the Uintah Basin, has donated $10,000. Duchesne County, Utah, and Garfield County, Colorado, have both contributed $5,000.
“We’re excited to see the project moving forward,” Staks said. “We’re thrilled that we’ve got widespread support.”
David Ludlam, executive director of the West Slope Colorado Oil & Gas Association, said his group is excited to see what comes from the report—and about the growing alliance between the two states and basins. “[It’s exciting] that people are even thinking about what we can achieve working together,” he said.
The final report is expected in August.