Sweetwater County Becomes Major Energy Player
Sweetwater County has been an energy player since the railroad transformed Rock Springs into a hub for coal mining after the Civil War. What’s going on now makes those heady, early days look like nickel slots.
Natural gas production is surging; old oil fields are getting another look; coal production is going strong; and the region has enough raw material to keep the world supplied with soda ash for a few thousand years. Sweetwater County even has uranium, and Wyoming is the nation’s largest source of it.
“Basically Wyoming is becoming the energy capital of the country,” says Dave Hanks, chief executive officer of the Rock Springs Chamber of Commerce. “The natural gas has been the engine pushing the train.”
Two key factors combined to fuel growth in the energy sector.
Demand for energy that is not dependent on foreign oil surged just as new technologies made getting at the raw materials worth the investment.
“The economy really starting picking up about four years ago,” says Pat Robbins, regional director of the Wyoming Business Council. “The reserves have always been there, but the costs have been prohibitive.”
Natural gas is a good example. The two hottest “plays,” as they say in the business, are the Jonah Field and the Pinedale Anticline, both just to the north in Sublette County. Together, they hold trillions of cubic feet of natural gas, ranking 5th and 2nd, respectively, among North American reserves. The depth of wells in these fields exceeds 12,000 feet, thousands deeper than those in other natural gas deposits in Wyoming.
“Everything came together at the right time to develop those fields,” Robbins says.
Directional drilling, new fracking techniques – which allow companies to get natural gas embedded in hard sand formation – and higher prices for the finished commodities make a winning formula.
“That is a very, very big thing going on right now, and it will continue for decades,” says Russell Kirlin, Wyoming regional manager for Questar Gas Company.
This isn’t a quick boom with its inevitable bust. Getting energy resources out of the ground is one huge step. Getting them where customers want them is another. New, big pipelines are boosting Wyoming’s national and international profile as a dependable source.
A 42-inch pipe, 2,300 miles long will transport natural gas from the Jonah and Pinedale Anticline fields to Minneapolis, Chicago and points even further east.
“This move clear over into the Ohio area is unprecedented in Wyoming and Rockies as the whole,” Kirlin says.
Gas resources in Louisiana and the Midwest are depleting, and though Canada remains a player, demand is outpacing supply, he says.
Hanks ticks off the stats: Unemployment at 1.7 percent, the nation’s largest coal producer, the second or third natural gas producer (for now), the seventh largest oil producer and first in uranium.
“Our economy is great out here,” he says.
And future energy plans? Rocky Mountain Power is developing a huge wind field, located partly in Sweetwater County, with 1,000 turbines.
