By Dennis Webb | The Daily Sentinel
A new U.S. Geological Survey national report points to the large amount of estimated undiscovered natural gas lying below federal lands in western Colorado, and two recent assessments zero in on newly estimated undiscovered oil and gas in a region including parts of northwest Colorado.
The USGS recently released a report on undiscovered oil and gas resources in formations under federally managed public lands. It estimated that nationally there are technically recoverable resources of 29.4 billion barrels of oil and 391.6 trillion cubic feet of gas.
That’s enough oil to supply all of the country’s needs for four years at the current rate of consumption, and enough gas to meet national needs for 12 years. However, the report doesn’t take into account factors such as what technically recoverable oil and gas would be economical to produce, and limitations on production due to factors such as lands having wilderness-area or other protections making them off-limits to drilling.
President Donald Trump ran on a “drill-baby-drill” energy platform, and the USGS issued the report in response to an order by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum regarding “Addressing the National Energy Emergency.”
Sarah Ryker, acting director of the USGS, said in a press conference on the report that, “in 2023 and 2024, 11% of all oil and 9% of natural gas produced in the United States came from federal lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management.”
Much of the nation’s estimated undiscovered oil resource on federal lands is in Alaska and New Mexico. But in terms of gas, states such as Wyoming and Colorado also hold significant estimated undiscovered amounts. Colorado’s federal lands have an estimated 60 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas, the third highest nationally, along with 190 million barrels of oil and 374.6 million barrels of natural gas liquids like propane and ethane, according to the USGS. Most of the state’s federal land, and by extension most of that oil and gas, is in western Colorado.
The estimated undiscovered resources differ from the known, discovered resources referred to by industry. The new federal report isn’t based on new geological assessments, but rather makes use of previously conducted assessments for various regions, adjusted to account for federal versus other lands.
One of those past assessments, in 2016, estimated that there are 66 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas in the Mancos shale formation in northwest Colorado’s Piceance Basin alone. That estimate included both federal and other lands. Most of the gas development to date in the Piceance Basin has been in sandstone formations rather than the Mancos shale.
The USGS estimates that the combined Piceance and Uinta basins in western Colorado and eastern Utah have 55.2 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas, and nearly 164 million barrels of oil, on federal lands alone. Those lands also have an estimated 81.5 million barrels of undiscovered natural gas liquids.
The USGS estimates that the Paradox Basin, centered in southwest Colorado and Utah, has about 329 million barrels of undiscovered oil, 8.5 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered natural gas and 327 million barrels of undiscovered natural gas liquids beneath federal lands. In terms of undiscovered resources on federal lands in the San Juan Basin in southwest Colorado and northwest New Mexico, the agency estimates there are just 3 million barrels of oil, but 29 trillion cubic feet of gas and 89.6 million barrels of natural gas liquids.