Colorado Has 40 Times More Natural Gas Than Previously Estimated
http://www.wsj.com/articles/colorado-has-40-times-more-natural-gas-than-previously-estimated-1465430936June 8, 2016
Western Colorado has 40 times more natural gas than previously thought, potentially making it the second-largest formation in the country, the U.S. Geological Survey said Wednesday.
Mancos Shale formation in Colorado’s Piceance Basin holds about 66.3 trillion cubic feet of gas, up from 1.6 trillion estimated in 2003, the USGS said, citing new research.
A trillion cubic feet of natural gas is enough to heat 15 million homes for a year, the U.S. Energy Department said.
The U.S. already has 2.9 trillion cubic feet of the fuel that has been extracted and put into storage, which has weighed on natural-gas futures prices. The contract for July delivery fell 0.6 cent, or 0.2%, to $2.468 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Wednesday.
David Ludlam, executive director of the West Slope Colorado Oil and Gas Association, said prices are too low to spur a boom.
If prices reach $3.50/mmBtu, companies would likely begin drilling, Mr. Ludlam said.
The U.S. also needs more facilities to export natural gas to Pacific nations to help make the Colorado gas competitive, he said, citing the proposed Jordan Cove Liquid Natural Gas terminal at Coos Bay, Ore.
The Piceance Basin, which spans much of western and northwestern Colorado, already has multiple well sites, pipelines and processing plants in place from a previous round of drilling in a shallower formation, Mr. Ludlam said.
Much of the basin is federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, and getting approval from the BLM to drill is often more difficult than getting private landowners to agree, said Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of government and public affairs at the Western Energy Alliance, an industry group....
USGS said the Marcellus has 84 trillion cubic feet of gas.....
