(2 of 3)
Like Lewis, countless other managers and entrepreneurs are coming to Denver to live amid its comfort and culture while their hired roughnecks and miners squeeze the energy from the rural outposts. Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming contain 48% of the nation's proven coal reserves, 15% of its oil and 10% of its natural gas. Many geologists believe that these estimates substantially understate the area's true energy wealth. Rising prices make it worthwhile for oilmen to drill into sites that previously were considered too risky or too costly to develop. Some experts figure that new oil finds in the four-state region could add about 50% to the nation's 29 billion bbl. of "proven" reserves and 40% to the 212 trillion cu. ft. of natural gas.
A most exciting strike was made in 1975 when a drilling crew hit oil and gas deep in northern Utah's Pineview Field in what is known as the "Overthrust Belt." A giant geologic knot that twists from southern Colorado to the Canadian border, the belt was not considered worth serious exploration at previous prices because of the tough and expensive drilling conditions. Pools of oil and gas are randomly located and perched on top of one another, and such formations make traditional exploration and analysis difficult, if not impossible. Says A.B. ("Pete") Slaybaugh, chief of Continental Oil's exploration team in the area: "Frequently we find ourselves drilling through more than one layer of soil, shale and rock, only to find another layer of the same. With a normal well there is usually only one layer. Mother Nature didn't do us any favors."
Adds James Vanderbeek, who heads the team from Amoco, which plans to spend $61 million next year in search and development in the area: "It's costing us up to $5 million to drill a single hole, twice that of a conventional well."
America's oil shale, which is estimated to contain about 75 billion bbl. of recoverable crude, is also concentrated in the region. Elaborate pilot projects to get the oil are planned by Occidental Petroleum in western Colorado and Union Oil in southeastern Wyoming. The investment would be hefty—$120 million for Union's 20,000-acre test site designed to produce 9,000 bbl. daily—but there is a strong chance that Congress will approve a $3 tax credit for each barrel produced.
Coal mining is also picking up in the prairies sloping east of the Rockies.
Wyoming's Powder River Basin, a huge treeless ellipse that runs from Casper north to Sheridan, contains an estimated 400 billion metric tons of coal—enough to provide the entire U.S. electricity needs for the next 250 years.