By Susan Franzheim

Resolution Education Services

At the bi-annual Four Corners Oil and Gas Conference in Farmington last month, David Dillon, supervising engineer to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, provided an update on La Plata County's infill gas-drilling program. He said that the county, with about 2,500 gas wells, accounts for 85 percent of Colorado's coal-bed methane gas.

In 2000, COGCC approved La Plata County for 760 additional well-site drilling windows, spaced within 23-acre sub-surface measurements. Three-hundred and sixty sites already have been drilled. That state mandated infill-order increased the county's well density from 1988's 320-acre spacing to 160 acres. Dillon said the new wells are producing enough to offset declines in older wells drilled between 1987 to 2000, proving the increased density was necessary for gas recovery. Dillon said an average of three drilling rigs operate in La Plata County each week, not counting remedial workover rigs.

The increased drilling has resulted in COGCC requirements for the testing of about 11,000 water wells in La Plata County, said Dillon.

"So far, we do not see any bad effects on water from infill wells," he said.

Technology, market incentives, collaboration and results are the four cornerstones for better protection of the environment, according to Stephen Johnson, acting deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Johnson, the conference's keynote speaker, said the greatest challenge facing the EPA is balancing the country's energy needs with environmental protection. In 2002, the first memorandum of understanding was struck between the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission and the EPA "to look at opportunities for collaboration - improving communications and ways we do business to marry up energy production and environmental protection." The IOGCC was formed in 1935 by the governors of 37 states. Each state has one representative, appointed by the respective governors.

Johnson said EPA's recent announcement requiring reductions and eventual elimination of sulphur from diesel fuel, which produces black smoke emissions, will prevent many premature deaths and eliminate hundreds of thousands of hospital visits.

For more information • Farmington's conference (held every two years) ) has 2006 information at: www.four cornersoilandgas.com or (505) 325-0279. • Access COGCC's Web site: www.oil-gas.state.co.us or (303) 235-1101.

Further good news for the environment came from Frank Chavez, the district supervisor for the New Mexico Oil Conservation District, who said a planning session was recently held to discuss efforts to further " ... increase operator accountability by developing and enforcing (more) regulations to ... protect the environment."

Steve Henke, director of the Bureau Land Management in Farmington, reported on a first-of-its-kind program funded by voluntary contributions from energy companies - $390,000 and growing - that works toward improving land health standards, studies, monitoring and special management areas, including aerial reseeding, rain-catcher tanks and riparian fencing.

Strategic management of nonindustry stakeholders' expectations of the energy industry and regulators was the focus of the Resolution Education Services' presentation. Industry and regulators were given many tools for producing more effective results by avoiding conflicts.

During question-and-answer time, several major producers in attendance said that everything surface-owners expect from the time a well is drilled to its plugging and abandoning needs to be proposed in writing for negotiating surface-use agreements. Oral agreements are not binding if production was sold to another company, they said.

More than 200 exhibitors and several thousand people attended the conference which provided the opportunity to get up close and personal with many major oil and gas company executives and regulators for invaluable discussions.

Susan Franzheim is the founder of Resolution Education Services, an oil and gas consulting group. E-mail: here for Susan Franzheim's conference presentation paper.