Entries Tagged 'Oil and gas' ↓

Earthjustice attorney Mike Freeman told the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel that settlement talks in the Colorado Environmental Coalition’s lawsuit challenging federal oil and gas leases on the Roan Plateau had not yielded an agreement yet, but the talks will continue and the Bureau of Land Management has decided to suspend the disputed leases during the negotiations.

Idaho-based Petroglyph Energy Inc. has suspended its natural gas drilling operations in Huerfano County while it searches for a solution to a methane leak that has contaminated drinking water wells in the area, the Associated Press reports. The company has proposed a plan that would prevent the flow of methane into water wells by creating a hydraulic barrier.

Williams Production is proposing to drill up to 93 wells from four well pads in western Colorado beginning this fall.

The proposal — outlined in the Flatiron Mesa Master Plan of Development the company submitted to the Bureau of Land Management — involves the construction of three new well pads, up to 1.5 miles of new access roads and up to 5.3 miles of new pipelines.

The project area covers about 4,000 acres of land located six miles southwest of Rifle already leased for oil and gas development. There is no public access into the area.

BLM will prepare an environmental assessment of the master plan and is seeking public comment on the proposal until Nov. 13.

There have been about 300 spills from drilling operations linked to water contamination in Colorado since 2003, but finding the source of the contamination has proven difficult and time-consuming for the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which investigates contamination complaints, the Denver Post reports.

Natural gas prices are at about $3.25 per million British Thermal Units, about $1.25 to $2.75 too low for many gas drillers to economically operate their rigs in Colorado’s Piceance Basin, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports.

SG Interests I Ltd. is proposing to drill as many as 150 new wells, including up to five water disposal wells, from 49 well pads on federal leases near Paonia.

Some will be coalbed methane wells with a spacing of 320 acres per well. If multiple natural gas producing zones are present, additional wells could be drilled in order to produce each of those other zones.

The Bureau of Land Management’s Uncompahgre field office is seeking public comment until Oct. 23 on the proposal, which was first outlined by SG last year. There are already 11 well pads in the area, which lies about 5 miles north of Paonia Reservoir near State Highway 133.

At the Mesa State College Energy Management Symposium yesterday in Grand Junction, energy trend researcher Porter Bennett warned that Colorado’s new oil and gas regulations could put the state at a disadvantage compared with other natural gas-rich states such as Pennsylvania and Louisiana, the Daily Sentinel reports.

In a letter to Gov. Bill Ritter (D) yesterday, a group of Republican lawmakers urged the governor to “moderate” the oil and gas rules that took effect this spring to encourage more natural gas production in the state. The 11 lawmakers wrote that they looked forward to working with Ritter “to restore some balance to these new rules that have done so much harm to rural communities and Colorado’s clean energy economy.”

LT Environmental Inc. has found a way to capture naturally occurring methane gas that seeps from the exposed rim of the San Juan Basin that arches across the southern half of La Plata County, converting the methane into enough electricity to power an average U.S. household for about six months, the Durango Herald reports.

The Bureau of Land Management’s Glenwood Springs field office is seeking public comment on an oil and gas exploration and development proposal on federal leases three miles southeast of Silt.

Bill Barrett Corp. is planning to develop up to 136 new wells from 10 proposed well pads during the next five years under the Gibson Gulch Master Development Plan.

The area proposed for development encompasses approximately 2,700 acres, of which 1,867 acres are federal surface and minerals, 40 acres are private surface and Ffederal minerals, and 793 acres are private surface and minerals.

Approximately 4.2 miles of new access roads and 4.3 miles of pipelines would be constructed. Directional drilling technology would be used to drill the majority of the wells.

The Glenwood Springs field office requires operators to submit master development plans. BLM officials say such plans allow for a broad evaluation of impacts and enable the agency to implement appropriate measures to mitigate these impacts.

BLM will prepare an environmental assessment on the master plan. It is seeking public comments on the plan until Sept. 18.