Energy Inc., powered by the Denver Business Journal, features in-depth industry reporting and analysis from our energy specialist, Cathy Proctor, with the latest oil, gas, wind and solar energy news from across Colorado.
Mar 17, 2014
An oil worker in Colorado works with a crew repairing a well. Photographer: Neal Ulevich/Bloomberg News
Denver Business Journal
Colorado’s booming energy industry produced nearly 63.2 million barrels of crude oil in 2013, a new state record for annual oil production, according to a Denver Business Journal review of records from the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC), which oversees the multi-billion dollar industry.
That’s a 28 percent jump from 2012, when the state’s oil and gas wells produced nearly 49.3 million barrels of oil, according to COGCC records.
Preliminary tallies on the COGCC’s website Monday indicated that the state produced 63,190,804 barrels of oil during 2013.
That breaks a record that’s stood for nearly 60 years, since 1956, when Colorado’s oil and gas wells produced nearly 62 million barrels of oil — specifically 61,995,000 barrels, according to COGCC records.
It also breaks another tally kept by the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists (RMAG), which says its records indicate Colorado's previous high-water mark of 58,564,000 barrels of oil was reached in 1956.
State energy officials on Monday cautioned that the COGCC’s oil production information is still tentative, with more information being filed every day.
But they also said that the 2013 production tally is more likely to rise rather than drop.
“Colorado is playing an important role in securing and expanding our domestic energy supplies, including cleaner-burning natural gas,” said Todd Hartman, the spokesman for the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, in response to the DBJ’s request for comment.
“This also represents a significant economic impact to our state and its workers and families,” Hartman said via email.
“At the same time we are producing these resources under one of the strongest regulatory regimes in the country. Carefully producing these important resources while fully protecting our communities and environment remains our focus,” he said.
Colorado oil production has been on a rising arc in the last few years as energy companies have poured billions of dollars worth of investment into the Denver-Julesburg Basin, which sprawls north and east of Denver into Wyoming and Nebraska.
They’re using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and horizontal drilling to unlock Colorado’s oil reserves trapped in the Niobrara rock formation — which lies thousands of feet underground.
Geologists have long know that the Niobrara formation, and other rock layers above and below it, held oil — but it took the new technology to tap into the resources.
But while Colorado’s oil reserves have captured the energy companies’ focus and investment, interest in drilling for the state’s natural gas reserves has waned.
Colorado produced nearly 1.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in 2013, down from 1.7 trillion cubic feet produced in 2012, according to preliminary figures on the COGCC website.
Oil is a higher-priced commodity compared to natural gas, and the nation’s supplies of natural gas have boomed in the last few years due to new reserves found in the eastern United States.
Cathy Proctor covers energy, the environment and transportation for the Denver Business Journal and edits the weekly "Energy Inc." newsletter. Phone: 303-803-9233. Subscribe to the Energy Inc. newsletter
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