Big oil back on top in the Rockies

Big oil companies are flexing their muscle once again in the Rocky Mountains, buoyed by Bush administration efforts to open the West to more oil and natural-gas drilling.

This time, the companies have set their sights on conventional natural gas instead of oil shale, which failed many of them decades ago.

The construction of pipelines, which carry natural gas from the Rockies to far-flung markets in the Midwest and on the East Coast where the commodity fetches higher prices, also is propelling the jump in activity.

"It is nice to see that oil majors are back," said Jim Anderson, an editorial manager at IHS Energy, one of the world's largest energy-information providers, "after everybody had left town to find natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico."

"It is natural gas in the Rockies, and there is plenty here, that brought them back," Anderson said.

IHS Energy bought Cambridge Energy Research Associates in 2004 — the consulting firm founded by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin. The company is owned by IHS Inc., based in Arapahoe County, Colo.

Anderson said companies such as Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron and BP are spending hundreds of millions — in some cases billions — of dollars to explore new oil and gas fields and develop more efficient ways to extract the resource.

Exxon Mobil, which had quit Colorado after oil-shale prices collapsed in the early 1980s, has chalked up plans to drill 75 to 100 new wells in Rio Blanco County this year.

The company says it is sitting on 35 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Piceance Basin, enough to fuel the nation for nearly two years.

Exxon doesn't disclose its planned investment in the Rockies. But Rio Blanco County officials say the company plans to build a gas-processing plant near Meeker that will employ 450 workers at the peak of construction.

Meanwhile, Chevron is testing wells on 100,000 acres north of Debeque near Grand Junction to see if it wants to develop that field.

Chevron has been in Colorado for more than 75 years and owns the Rangely oil field, which continues to produce oil.

BP is set to pour nearly $3 billion into Wyoming and millions more into Colorado. BP is Colorado's largest gas producer.

Shell has plans to drill more wells in Wyoming's Pinedale area, where it owns about 20,000 acres.