Mountain Biking: Rubber side down- Time for a TurnaroundWell, my friends, things are finally looking up, and good timing, too, since I’m sure you’re all sick of me bitching. Recent bike build, including wheels… fun! In what feels like a fairly short time, I’ve come from sitting around … Continue reading → […]
- This Raised My PulseHey, baby… wanna ride? I may be injured, but I’m not dead yet. I can still have racy thoughts. Here’s more info. In other news, UBI was an awesome success! I had a blast. I highly recommend it. Overhaul day…. … Continue reading → […]
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Colorado towns hope for oil boost
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An oil rig works in the distance in front of the Rocky Mountains | flickr user rjones0856
Somebody recently told me that she was surprised at the number of oil rigs she saw around Colorado on her first trip through the rest of the state — a loop from Boulder to Mesa Verde and back. But Colorado has always been known for being rich in something under the ground and when you get out into any kind of open space, you’re bound to see some kind of rig.
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Out of curiosity, I went poking around the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission’s website and found a couple of nice at-a-glance items. Everybody knows Colorado is rich in natural gas, so here’s a quick look at how much natural gas and oil Colorado produced from 1995-2000 for comparison. Note that the numbers are not directly comparable because the oil is measured in barrels (BBL) and the gas is measured per thousand cubic feed (Mcf) and oil is a liquid and gas is a, er, you know…
Those numbers feel a little dusty, though, so here are Colorado’s oil numbers for 2009 [PDF], again by county.
And finally, to bring it home, here, you can search the Commission’s database by county, well or field to find out local information.
I’m thinking about all of this because the Post has a story today about some Colorado towns hoping for an economic boost from new oil drilling, thanks to a new oil drilling technology:
GROVER — In the shadow of Colorado’s largest wind farm, the new-energy economy is taking a back seat to old-fashioned oil. Drilling rigs are springing up in areas of Weld County largely bypassed by the natural-gas boom of the past decade. Dying agricultural communities where boarded-up storefronts outnumber open businesses envision a fiscal jolt from oil that could keep the towns’ fragile economies afloat.
The impetus is a new horizontal drilling technique that allows energy firms to produce more oil with fewer wells. A handful of wells drilled this year in a geologic formation known as the Niobrara Shale have been gushers by Colorado standards.
The Niobrara Shale is so named after the geologic formation on which it sits. So if you’re tired of thinking about gas and oil, here are pictures of very old fish and dinosaurs from there.
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