By CANDY MOULTON
Star-Tribune correspondent
Thursday, April 29, 2004 12:00 AM MDT
RAWLINS -- Anadarko Petroleum anticipates ramping up its employment and spending in Carbon County over the next two or three years as expanded oil and gas and coalbed methane exploration and field development takes place southwest of Rawlins and north of Hanna.
Pilot CBM wells in the Atlantic Rim area located southwest of Rawlins and north of Baggs are already in place. Anadarko currently has nine operated drilling rigs working in the state, and six non-operated rigs in the Wamsutter area of Sweetwater County, where it anticipates spending $22 million to drill another 22 wells this year, Anadarko CBM Manager Brad Miller said.
Full field development in the Atlantic Rim CBM project is expected to begin during the next two years. During that time the company anticipates hiring up to 70 people, bumping its payroll to more than $6 million and having total annual expenditures of $75 million, officials said.
The Atlantic Rim project encompasses 211,000 acres. Plans call for it to eventually have around 950 CBM wells, developed at a cost of about $500 million, Miller said. "We feel this is a world class oil and gas field," he said, noting that it is about 50 miles long and ten miles wide.
Although much of the project will be developed on land owned by Anadarko -- which in 2000 purchased the holdings of Union Pacific Resources, involving checkerboard lands that had been part of the 1862 Railway Act grant to the Union Pacific Railroad -- it also has leases for other lands owned by private individuals and federal land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
The BLM is currently preparing an environmental impact statement for the project, which is expected to be finalized early in 2005.
Among the issues to be addressed are potential impacts to cultural resources and to wildlife habitat for species such as sage grouse and prairie dog, and crucial winter range for elk, mule deer, and antelope.
In addition to the wells themselves, the Atlantic Rim project will involve development of electric power lines, a water pipeline and a gas pipeline to serve each well, with a major electric and gas lines to be placed on a north-south axis across the entire project area, said Neil Labbe, Anadarko Operations Manager in Rock Springs.
Other Anadarko officials said water produced as a result of the CBM production there will be reinjected into the ground, a process that is possible in Carbon County due to geology and something that has not been practical in Johnson County and other areas of the Powder River Basin. When possible, water may be developed for wildlife or agricultural use.
Anadarko is also in the exploration phase in the Hanna Basin with potential CBM activities in the Hanna Draw area, located about five miles north of Hanna. That project encompasses 760,000 acres and has significant oil and gas opportunity. It will potentially cost $160 million to develop and could involve up to 225 wells, Miller said.
With all its projects, Anadarko anticipates developing 1,600 CBM wells in the county over the next five years. Most are expected to be on a 1 to 160 acre spacing, Miller said. |
