Colorado claims two of the most important oil and gas basins in the country: the natural gas-rich Piceance in western Colorado and the crude oil-driven DJ in the northcentral part of the state.
Both are widely recognized as prolific, accessible and with sufficient infrastructure to reach key markets. And both face an uncertain future as federal policy looms over one and growing community resistance encroaches on the other. As a result, each is operated distinctly and by a different type of company.
Different Approach
As oil and gas companies assemble a capital budget for a each new well, they bake in the cost of the mineral leasing, surface use, rights of way, permits, drilling, completions, production facilities, professional and oilfield services, and dozens of other miscellaneous expenses.
In Colorado, as compared to other states, the number crunchers also must factor in well relocations due to community pressure, well casings that generally go deeper, water-well testing, sound barriers and other “extras” as the cost of being a good neighbor.
“While most companies see good community relations as an investment, there are added initial and ongoing expenses that drive incremental increases in development costs,” commented Reed Olmstead, an analyst at IHS Energy.
Such financial considerations play a larger role in wells developed in the DJ than in the rural Piceance, but both feel the effects.
Since the time the Piceance development boom began in earnest 14 years ago, natural gas production doubled in 2005 and again in 2009. But by then, the market was flooded with gas from newly developed fields in Pennsylvania, Texas and Louisiana. Figures from the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission show Piceance production increased another 25 percent to a peak of 2.4 billion cubic feet per day in 2012.
For perspective, national demand for natural gas in the U.S. averages 76.5 billion cubic feet per day, according to recent figures from the federal Energy Information Administration.
Squeezed by low oil prices, production from the DJ has slid to 9.6 million barrels per month after touching a peak in August 2015 of 10.6 million barrels of oil for the month. Nationally, U.S. production peaked at 299 million barrels in March 2015, and by May 2016 had eased back to 277 million barrels for the month, the most recent period for which data is available.
The other big difference between the Piceance and the DJ Basin is the operators. For years, the two biggest companies in the Piceance were WPX Energy, the leader followed closely by Encana. The rest of the pack was lead by Occidental, ExxonMobil’s unit XTO Energy, Chevron, Bill Barrett and Ursa Operating.
That all changed this year. First WPX sold its entire Piceance operation to rookie operator Terra Energy Partners for $910 million. The deal includes 5,500 wells on 200,000 acres and production of 500 million cubic feet of gas daily. Terra estimates the acreage holds 2 trillion cubic feet of proved reserves and an inventory of low-risk drilling locations.
WPX, which spun off from Williams Companies in 2012, is a $3.5 billion corporation. Terra Energy is a privately held company led by a team of former Occidental executives who headed that company’s expansion in the Piceance a decade ago.
Despite its tremendous potential, the Piceance today seems more the province of small, focused operators rather than the large, public multinational corporations.
“Private equity funders prefer to back a management team rather than acreage,” said Sarp Ozkan, a senior energy analyst at Ponderosa Advisors in Denver.
Terra is one example, Ozkan said. Ursa Resources is another.
“Ursa’s management team is made up of Encana guys that drilled up the Piceance 10 years ago; they know the field inside and out. Private equity invests in the managers so of course they invest in the Piceance.”
Larger companies with their fiduciary duties to shareholders have to invest where they can expect the quickest and best return with the lowest risk. “At today’s gas prices, the Piceance doesn’t make sense for the bigger guys that have acreage in many basins,” Ozkan said.
That’s why the Piceance does make sense for companies that can focus on a one or maybe two plays, he said, adding that a basin with the potential of the Piceance will provide healthy returns as prices return to historic averages.
Piceance Potential
Why then is the Piceance, a basin that went through a tremendous growth spurt 10 years ago, now seen as the gas play of the future?
When The U.S. Geological Survey released its revised assessment of the Mancos Shale formation in the Piceance Basin in June, many in the industry felt finally vindicated after years of exclaiming its potential.
“There are many who see the USGS as a laggard on this,” said David Ludlum, executive director of the West Slope Chapter of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association. “Companies have been talking about the potential of the Mancos formation for five years. In fact, we were planning an event at Colorado Mesa University featuring the Potential Gas Committee. We asked them to talk about the Mancos because nobody else was.”
“Well, the USGS did it for us and with authority,” Ludlum observed. “Because they are a trusted third party, when they say the Mancos Shale contains 66 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, you can take that as a very solid, but conservative estimate.”
The USGS on June 8 released what it called the “second largest assessment of potential shale and tight gas resources it has ever conducted.” Its report estimated the Mancos Shale, one of several resource-bearing formations in the Piceance, contains 66 trillion cubic feet of gas, 74 million barrels of shale oil and 45 million barrels of natural gas liquids.
This year’s assessment updates a previous USGS estimate in 2003 and says the Mancos contains 40 times the recoverable natural gas than the earlier estimate. Yet, even that whopping increase underestimates what many in industry see as a more realistic forecast for the Piceance.
“The survey looked only at the Mancos,” Ludlum said. “When you consider there are 30 years of locations left to drill in the Mesa Verde formation, some in the industry believe there are more than 100 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas. That puts the Piceance at the top of the list for gas-producing basins in the country, ahead of the Marcellus.”
And this being Colorado, the USGS assessment was quickly drawn into the political arena.
That the Piceance contains so much more natural gas than was officially considered became a rallying cry for industry and for the elected officials who see energy development as an important part of state and regional economies. It also earned a scoff from the environmental community.
The assessment was cited as one of two key facts overlooked when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in March denied a permit to construct the Jordan Cove LNG export terminal at Coos Bay, Ore. The FERC said the demand outlook for liquefied natural gas did not justify construction of a connector pipeline and a new export facility on the Pacific Coast. And, long-term projections showed a limited, insufficient supply of natural gas originating in the Rockies, the commission noted in denying the permit.
Not so fast, rejoined Ludlum. Several large Asian energy trading companies were on record as willing to purchase long-term supplies of natural gas to serve the Pacific Rim’s growing demand for electricity, he said. And, as the expansive USGS assessment shows, Western Colorado’s Piceance Basin is capable of providing an ample, enduring supply.
The USGS report was also dropped into the middle of a long-running controversy over drilling leases in a portion of the White River National Forest south of Glenwood Springs known as the Thompson Divide, which stretches from De Beque on the west to Carbondale on the east and generally south of Interstate 70. Covering 221,500 acres, it includes parts of Pitkin, Gunnison, Delta, Mesa and Garfield counties.
The BLM reports that oil and gas wells have been drilled in the area continuously since 1947. Included in the BLM history report is the Wolf Creek Storage Area with its average 3 billion cubic feet of gas in storage and room for another 3 billion cubic feet if needed. Wolf Creek is considered a critical supply point for natural gas customers from Glenwood Springs to Aspen.
In 2004, three oil and gas drilling leases issued by BLM in Pitkin County were challenged as improper and sent for review at the Interior Department’s Board of Land Appeal. Four years later, the board ruled BLM must “either do its own environmental analysis or formally adopt” an Environmental Impact Statement issued in 1993 by the U.S. Forest Service that allows drilling leases to be issued.
The lease challengers contended the leases were issued without undergoing a formal environmental review and as a result, were invalid.
The issue remained in limbo until last fall when BLM announced it would produce a new EIS and conduct its own environmental analysis of all 65 drilling leases in the White River forest issued since the 1993 USFS analysis. The bureau stated that its analysis would determine whether “the leases should be voided, reaffirmed, modified, or subject to additional mitigation measures.”
In February, BLM announced revisions to its draft EIS that included cancellation of up to 25 non-producing oil and gas leases in the Thompson Divide area. It formalized that plan with release of its final EIS July 29.
In opposing drilling leases, the Thompson Divide Coalition, based in Carbondale, called natural gas supply from the area “unneeded” given the current low-price market and that development would be disruptive of a vibrant “hunting, fishing, ranching and recreation economy” that supports 300 jobs and generates $30 million in economic activity.
David Ludlum, executive director of West Slope COGA, characterized the Thompson Divide area of the forest as “nothing special” forest-wise. “Everyone thinks their little slice is unique; in this case you have to consider the demographics,” he said.
DJ Basin
About 260 miles to the east of the Piceance hub at Parachute, the DJ Basin, centered in Greeley, has seen a fundamental transformation from a liquids-rich natural gas field to the seventh largest oil production area in the U.S.
The list of top DJ operators is a mix of public corporations worth billions and private companies with a half dozen employees and operations in a single basin.
An example of the former is Noble Energy. It is second largest oil producer in the DJ Basin and just reported strong second quarter 2016 numbers globally and for its Colorado business.
During the recent quarter, Noble drilled 26 wells in the DJ with an average lateral reach of more than 8,100 feet. It continues to hold a leading spot among all oil companies in terms of lowest cost to drill and complete a new unconventional well. The company reports drilling 9,000-foot lateral wells in eight days and completing slickwater hydraulically fractured wells that see more than 1,000 pounds of proppant per lateral foot, feats nearly unimaginable just five years ago.
Noble’s success in new well development resulted in quarterly DJ Basin sales of 113,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, an increase of nearly 5 percent over last year.
Other top operators in the DJ Basin reported similar steady production increases, lower development costs and incremental improvements in acreage positions. And above all, companies are talking about growth and positioning despite, or even because of the downturn.
An example is Extraction Oil & Gas, famously private as a company. It is now looking to go big and go public. In early August, the company, backed by Yorktown Partners, the same private equity firm that supported Extraction’s rapid three-year growth curve, was reported to have filed a registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, an indication the company plans to launch an Initial Public Offering to sell shares in the company.
As any investor knows, public offering of company shares carries risk. A recent example of how much risk comes via Synergy Resources, one of the leading operators in the DJ.
Announced to shareholders a year ago, Synergy’s growth strategy included adding to its acreage position in and around the Wells Ranch east of Greeley. Earlier this year, the company acquired 33,100 acres from Noble in a $55 million deal.
The acquisition was a significant step forward in making Synergy “a leading operator” in the DJ Basin, said Lynn Peterson, Synergy chairman and chief executive officer. “By consolidating our properties into a more focused footprint, we should be able to gain operating efficiencies.”
The company’s stock price was hammered in trading this summer following release of a quarterly report showing it posted a loss and that it missed revenue targets.
Despite the choppy stock market, the company “has accomplished a great deal in a very challenging market,” Peterson said. “The transformational acquisition of assets in the first half of 2016 makes us very optimistic about our future.”
Spend enough time with an oil and gas industry veteran and eventually you’ll be told that “everything is always for sale.” Unfortunately, the rough seas the industry has been sailing through for the past 18 months means the volume of asset sale transactions in the DJ has continued apace with no sign of slowing down.
On one hand, Encana has exited the oil side of the business in northern Colorado. On the other, small independent PetroShare Corp. acquired more than 7,000 acres of producing assets in Adams County for $6 million in July.
The big story came to a close in early August, when Encana confirmed it closed on the $900 million sale of 51,000 acres along the western side of the DJ Basin to newly formed Crestone Peak Resources. Encana is also said to be considering sale of its natural gas assets in the Piceance and elsewhere so it can concentrate on highly productive operations in western Canada and Texas.
With the closing, Encana drops from the list of top operators in the DJ with PDC Energy moving up to the third spot behind Anadarko and Noble.
Keep Moving
For most of its 45-year operating life, the Wattenberg portion of the DJ Basin, an expansive region which stretches into Nebraska, has seen oil and gas companies large and small set up shop, prosper or struggle, sell or acquire, and ultimately come and go. The nature of the oil and gas business is that it never stands still.
The Piceance is a more recent development that came on strong with high gas prices 15 years ago and is transforming into a long-term gas play that looks to overseas markets for customers.
During the summer, optimism grew as prices weaved through the mid-$40s for oil, providing enough assurance that some companies in the DJ added a rig while others began working through their list of drilled uncompleted wells, or DUCs. In the Piceance, gas drillers were encouraged by a gradual strengthening of prices due to a steady increase in demand from utilities switching from coal to gas and from an unusually hot summer.
It is not news that the industry continues to weather another downturn. This time, like earlier slowdowns, the sustained Arctic blast of low prices and oversupply eventually will give way to the unremitting demand for energy to power our irresistible need for heat, light and mobility.
In Colorado, this recovery will face new challenges from a federal government interested in slowly choking off production on public lands in the Piceance, and to growing community resistance at the intersection of energy development and suburban sprawl in the DJ.
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