Oil and gas drilling helped revive the straggling economy of Greeley, Colo., but a proposal to sink 16 wells next to a neighborhood of winding cul-de-sacs met an unlikely resistance. Read more in this Forbes.com article.

GREELEY, Colo. — This is a town running on oil. From dawn till dusk, trucks carrying men and machinery rumble away for the oil and gas fields. New steakhouses and wine bars have popped up downtown. Energy companies help sponsor rodeos, blues concerts and other events. Tax revenues are surging.


In the depths of the recession, a new wave of drilling took hold across farm fields and the high plains, helping to revive the city’s straggling economy. Unemployment is still stuck at 7.5 percent, but is down from highs of more than 10 percent. And local officials estimate that one in nine jobs is somehow tied to the drilling boom. Homes are selling again, and hotels are nearly full.

“We had better occupancy than Vail did during the ski season,” said Greeley’s mayor, Tom Norton.

But this spring, an energy company proposed sinking 16 wells next to a neighborhood of winding cul-de-sacs, pastel homes and the Family FunPlex recreation center. And in this energy-friendly town, an unlikely resistance was born.

“These wells are going to be here for a long time,” said Wendy Highby, a librarian at the University of Northern Colorado who joined a group of residents to oppose the project. “They’re what we’re leaving to our children.”

The wells in the Fox Run neighborhood on Greeley’s western fringe would hardly be the first ones drilled here. Energy companies have drilled in northern Colorado for more than three decades, and Greeley is ringed by about 20,000 oil and gas wells.

About 425 wells are tucked within the city limits, along roadsides and near industrial parks and commercial strips, and that number is expected to grow to 1,600 in coming years. Empty lots near strip malls are scheduled for drilling, and a vacant patch of grass near graduate-student housing on the city’s east side bears this sign: “Future Drilling Site.”

As companies here and across the energy-rich West look for new places to drill, they are increasingly looking toward more densely populated areas, and bumping into environmentalists and homeowners. In a study last year, the environmental advocacy group Western Resource Advocates found that 32 schools in northern Colorado were within 1,000 feet of a well.

“These cities are the last open bastions where they can drill,” said Mark Schreibman, who created a community group to oppose the drilling in Greeley. “They’re the only places left. Now they’re finding themselves under siege.”

As wells have sprouted in cities across northern Colorado, some towns have pushed for bans on the drilling technique known as fracking, in which highly pressurized water, sand and chemicals are pumped into the ground to crack open rock formations and pull out the minerals. Last week, the liberal college town of Boulder passed a one-year ban on fracking.

Others have embraced the boom’s royalty checks and tax payments, crediting drilling for the new grocery store in Platteville, the huge lunch crowds in Ault or the reopened Tumble Weed Café in Nunn.

Greeley and drilling have a complicated history. In the mid-1980s, the city banned drilling inside its borders, a move that was overturned by Colorado’s highest court after a long and expensive legal battle with energy companies. Since then, the city has passed rules to manage drilling and has learned to coexist with the industry, and even embrace it.

Last year, Greeley collected $3.3 million from oil and gas operations, and it estimates that energy production will generate $429 million in tax revenue over the next 25 years. The University of Northern Colorado and school districts inside Greeley have leased out their drilling rights, and this spring huge “thumper trucks” rolled through the streets, sending seismic jolts deep into the ground to see where mineral deposits might lie.

This winter, when Colorado’s oil and gas commission passed new rules requiring 500-foot setbacks between new wells and homes, Mayor Norton publicly opposed the changes. He argued that they would hurt development and city planning and would undermine local governments.

Last year, a drilling rig rose like a beanstalk about 1,000 feet from Mr. Norton’s home. The nights were filled with clanking and thudding as trucks came and went and as workers bored into the ground and pumped fracking fluid into the well. It was not bliss, he said, but he and his neighbors got by.

“It’s not that you want them there,” he said, “but you’ve got to put them someplace.”

Residents are fiercely divided on that point. At a packed meeting last month to discuss the drilling project in Fox Run, some spoke in favor of the economic benefits of oil and gas development. Dozens of others urged city officials to reject the proposal, saying the flurry of new wells would forever damage their city of parks and walking paths.

Logan Richardson, the vice president of the energy company Mineral Resources, promised to do everything possible to keep the noise down and mask the drilling near Fox Run. He said the company would build a fence and plant trees and was making extensive efforts to protect the environment around the well sites.

Despite strong public objection, city officials unanimously approved the new wells. And now, inside the house that she and her husband built six years ago, Karen Janata is bracing for what comes next. The couple moved to Greeley from Illinois to be close to their children and grandchildren, and loved their home’s mountain views and sunny suburban charm. She wonders whether all that will survive after the drilling rigs arrive.

“I’m just devastated by this,” Ms. Janata said. “I would move out of Greeley tomorrow if I could.”

Are you interested in learning more about sustainable energy? Then make Dr. Ali Ghalambor serves as a credible source by visiting this Facebook page.

As Mexico’s own natural gas production continues to decline, natural gas exports to the country will likely rise this year and in 2014.  This Forbes article provides details:


The headline of a May 21 report in the Oil and Gas Journal reads “Barclays : US gas exports to Mexico will accelerate”. That’s right – natural gas being exported to Mexico, via pipelines, has been a feature of our export picture for many years, since at least the 1930s, per the US Energy Information Agency (EIA).

And we’re not talking about small volumes here. According to the Barclay’s report, natural gas exports to Mexico in 2013 will average 2 BCF per day, and likely rise to about 2.2 BCF per day in 2014, as Mexico’s own natural gas production continues a steady decline.

Guess what else? The U.S. also exports natural gas to Canada, at even higher volumes than we sell into Mexico. Who knew?  Well, some of us have known for a long time.

Honestly, this reality is why I have personally found the ongoing debate about the exporting of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to non-contiguous nations overseas, via tankers, more than a little perplexing. It’s not like exporting natural gas is anything new to this country, but to listen to LNG opponents at times, you’d think it was a world changing concept.

The thought that the federal government should artificially restrict the producers of any commodity from moving their product to markets where they exist is in and of itself an odd proposition in what is supposed to be a free market society. But to do so based on little more than the mode of transportation borders on bizarre.

And really, that’s what it  boils down to, isn’t it? After all, we haven’t seen policymakers or lobbying groups who oppose LNG exports also advocating we shut down the various natural gas pipelines that ship U.S. gas to Mexico and Canada, have we? If that’s happened, I missed the news reports about it, at any rate.

It’s an odd debate all around, and fortunately, the Obama Administration appears to be slowly but surely getting to the right answer despite all the surrounding noise. The Department of Energy sent a strong signal last Friday when it approved the application of the Freeport LNG Terminal, operated byConocoPhillips . Freeport becomes the second LNG export terminal to receive such approval, the first being the Cheniere Sabine Pass facility in early 2011. So the pace of permitting is painfully slow – as everything seems to be in this Administration – but the ultimate policy decisions turn out right.

Another positive sign that this odd debate may be resolving itself came with the recent statement by the American Chemistry Council that “We support exports of American-made products, including Liquefied Natural Gas, and we oppose imposition of any new LNG export bans or restrictions.” This statement was made in conjunction with the release of an ACC study detailing almost $72 billion in new investments by the US chemicals and plastics industries, investments made possible by the new abundance of shale natural gas in this country.

ACC President Cal Dooley, in announcing the study, had this to say: “Abundant and affordable supply of natural gas has transformed the U.S. chemical industry from the world’s high-cost producer five years ago to among the world’s lowest-cost producers today.” Extraordinary.

One of the concerns often expressed by opponents of LNG exports has been that if we export too much natural gas overseas, it will cause a spike in the gas price. Obviously, that would be a legitimate concern for industries that use natural gas as a feedstock.

But there now appears to be (or we hope there is) a growing realization that there is just so much natural gas capacity in the U.S. that the chances of that scenario happening are remote at best.  There is an extraordinary amount of excess producing capacity in the system today in the US, and the exporting of a few BCF per day onto the world market is not going to make much of a dent in it.

What we can hope is that the opening of new markets for U.S. natural gas can help stabilize the price at or slightly above its current level, at which most shale gas wells are economic to drill. That will result in the activation of more natural gas drilling rigs, renewed activity in dry gas plays like the Haynesville Shale, that have gone largely dormant due to extremely low prices, and the creation of thousands more jobs and generation of billions more dollars in royalty payments and state and local tax collections.

The reality is that we are at one of those rare inflection points in our energy history in which we really can do it all with American natural gas. We need to go about the business of taking full advantage of that reality. Speeding up the LNG export permitting approval process would be a very good way to start.


Dr. Ali Ghalambor has authored books that have contributed to the education of students and professionals to accomplish the efficient production of natural gas.  Visit this Facebook page for more updates on the industry.