An oil rig on
ranchland west of Cheyenne is among the first to tap into the Niobrara
shale beneath Wyoming and Colorado, one of a score of new and renewed
oil plays made possible through a combination of horizontal drilling and
hydraulic fracturing.
Photograph by Mead Gruver, AP
The rolling high plains east of Colorado Springs saw plenty of change before the "landmen" came. Ranchland that once
stretched three or four miles between homes filled in with residential
developments on multi-acre lots, bringing more people and paved roads.
Then,
about two years ago, came a rush of real estate negotiators, snapping
up leases for potential shale oil drilling. "I've never seen anything
like it," says Rick Davis, 53, whose grandfather started buying
ranchland in the early 1900s in Colorado's eastern El Paso County.
"Turns out that land was right in the center of all the activity."
And
it has thrust the Davis family into the middle of a boom in U.S. oil
production. Oil exploration is moving to new corners of the country as
drillers use a combination of technologies to tap crude that was always
known to be there, but only now can be produced economically.
El
Paso County, which had plenty of cattle but never a producing well, sits
on the Niobrara shale. The geologic formation stretches from Colorado
into Wyoming, while also touching parts of Nebraska and Kansas. The
Niobrara is one of about a score of new and renewed oil plays made possible through a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.
Also
called fracking, the sometimes controversial fracturing process mixes
water with sand and chemicals to break up underground shale and release
hydrocarbons. Gas producers early last decade combined fracking and
horizontal drilling with outstanding results, significantly altering the
U.S. energy picture and touching off major gas drilling booms in Texas,
Louisiana, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.
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