Colorado Test Wells Reveal More Than 1 Billion Barrels Of Oil For Anadarko

DALLAS -- Anadarko Petroleum Corp. said Monday that results from early drilling indicate that the company could produce the equivalent of more than 1 billion barrels of oil from an energy field in Colorado.

Anadarko said that 11 horizontal wells drilled in the Wattenberg field yielded "strong" initial rates of production and high levels of liquids, which have commanded better prices than natural gas.

The Houston company said its program of horizontal drilling in the Wattenberg field is among its best on U.S. land and should quickly generate "significant" cash flow.

The region could produce the equivalent of 500 million to 1.5 billion barrels in oil, natural gas liquids, and natural gas, Anadarko said.

The company said it plans to drill 160 horizontal wells in the area next year, up from previous plans for 40 wells, and could eventually put 1,200 to 2,700 wells there.

Anadarko said it holds interests in more than 350,000 acres in the Wattenberg field and operates more than 5,200 wells.

Anadarko shares fell $1.44 to close at $79.28. In extended trading after the announcement, they were up $1.46 at $80.74.

Comments

[Drew Sargent]

04:38 PM on 11/16/2011

Fantastic!! Add this good oil news to the incredible Bakken shale formation discoveries in South Dakota and we have bonanza. Maybe then the price of oil at the pump will sink to a reasonable level; maybe our involvement in the mideast will dwindle to nothing; maybe we will turn our attention back to our country and our citizens.

[Brianm37]

06:35 PM on 11/15/2011

This is the worst article I've yet to read on HuffPo. Obviously the author has no context of global oil consumption, as they would know 1bil barrels of oil is more or less 2-3 weeks of supply. Get a clue.

[Durango]

03:46 PM on 11/16/2011

There is tremendous potential in tapping oil from shale deposits.

The Mancos Shale in the San Juan Basin  alone could redefine oil production in the USA.

[radmo]

04:13 PM on 11/15/2011

It does not matter how much oil is available, the stuck pig-like screaming will prevent any and all extraction.

[MichaelAKD]

02:55 PM on 11/15/2011

eighty five percent of coloradoans live in the urban corridor. the urban corridor is basically thirty miles wide and runs from pueblo north 200 miles along the eastern slope of the rockies to the wyoming state line. in colorado the historical norm has been that most home owners don't own the separate mineral rights. so herein lies the biggest issue for coloradoans and that is most of the oil, it lies beneath the urban corridor, beneath our homes. with advances in the petroleum industry, oil once impossible to get to is now readily available but it comes at a very high cost to home owners. we are already seeing oil wells literally pop up in hundreds of people's backyards. the majority without mineral rights, at the "mercy" of the drillers and the oil companies. how would any of us like our backyards to have oil wells pumping away night and day, 24/7. there is no escape, not from the noise, the traffic, the air clogged with dust from all the trucks or the constant droning of the pumps. so how do we take care of our own or do we just continue to look the other way while people's lives, dreams are ruined all so we can save a few pennies at the pump? the price WE are being asked to pay is far too high imho. slap a well in one of the "drill baby drill" crowd's backyard and see how quick they change their tune.

[lea171]

04:11 PM on 11/15/2011

Ask the people who live there. I live in Northern Colorado and work in Cheyenne, WY where there are plans to drill for oil and build a pipeline from Wy to CO. Home values have gone up and there is job growth. They are building a 70 acre area with companies and housing for the oil industry. By the way, none of the city houses will have rigs in their back yards, most of the privately owned land are ranches with lots of acreage, this is the northern plains, after all. It's true that they have no mineral rights, but they will still make money on the leases. The oild companies would not have to do this if the government would release the leases on the BLM property.

[PuSencer]

05:22 PM on 11/15/2011

in greeley, there are rigs in people's back yards from time to time.

[Joe Padilla]

04:14 PM on 11/15/2011

Please do your part and turn off your computer, stop driving, stop flying, and don't buy or use anything transported using diesel. If you aren't willing to do that then try to understand that millions of good people are just like you and want to use energy.

I live in Denver and this doesn't ruin my dreams, cause noise, dust or anything like that. The mineral rights pre-date the state and belong mostly to the railroads and Indians (no, not Mexicans). If you weren't cool with the mineral rights being exercised then you shouldn't have bought property subject to those rights.

[TCPITS]

06:27 PM on 11/15/2011

The rights to minerals were grabbed by railroads and mostly by the coal industry. The northern field supplied much of Denver's house coal, as well as coal for the goldfields in the mountains. I think Indians had nothing to do with it, having been massacred (Sand Creek, 1864) or "relocated" long before anyone much cared about the coal. And what is up with the crack about Mexicans?

[PuSencer]

02:54 PM on 11/15/2011

great. i live on top of that. i hope my water doesn't become flammable to ensure anadarko's profits

[mjeffn]

05:09 PM on 11/15/2011

there are flammable faucets around Durango

[No Longer Amused 25]

02:45 PM on 11/15/2011

Ahem, excuse me! Ex-CUUUSE me! Having spent a good portion of my young life in the oil patch, I want to tell all you wet-behind-the-ears journalists who know nothing about oil well drilling nor geology that the Wattenberg play has been not only known-about, but drilled to death since the 1950s.

Now if you could only hire some reporters with oil field experience HufPoo, you might learn that what Anadarko is trying to pull here is a fake way to get everybody excited about FRACKING the old oil fields up there and squeeze what's left of the minerals out of the target zones of years ago.

They don't care about the water table or what fracking will do to the fragile soils above (wheat farms mostly). They want you to believe this is some NEW oil field find that will save America.

Here's a tip: When ever you see the words "horizontal drilling" these days, most of the time they are talking about going into played-out fields for a second round of extraction and they have to shove chemicals down the holes to chase out the remaining gas and ha ha ha "liquids."

[Durango]

02:58 PM on 11/15/2011

Not what the Denver Post is reporting.

The oil is in shale beds, which is a new technology.

[No Longer Amused 25]

09:18 PM on 11/15/2011

A shale bed, genius, is not a technology, it is a geologic formation. I repeat, the oil-bearing formations in the strat column have been tapped for years. Now they are going back into those same places and using hydraulic fracking with steam, sufuric acid, pressurized sand slurry and about nine proprietary fizzy chemicals to squeeze what little oil and gas is left trapped in shale pockets. There will be no great Saudi-like oil boom in that geologic basin. There will be a great deal of lies and misinformation being pumped into Denver journalists who would know a shale shaker from a Kelly bushing.

[Fido0311]

03:39 PM on 11/15/2011

Good old "liquid" that would kill an elephant with a few drops haha

[berrycuda]

01:42 PM on 11/15/2011

lol

Sure, Colorado has enough oil to supply the world for 11 days...

that helps. not.

[nothingchanges]

01:36 PM on 11/15/2011

And if the "fracking' process triggers earthquakes? Who pays?

Not your insurance company....................its "an act of God".

(with a little help, and a lot of profit)

[nltldoc]

01:32 PM on 11/15/2011

Really!?

One should think this through....
The NON-regulated Oil Industry has shown it's priorities and "true colors" by past and ongoing behaviors - basically, screw the environment, distort the science, make obscene profits.

Do you recall the Bush/Rep. "regulators" of the Colorado ilk who were literally "in bed" - cocaine snorting - with the Oil Industry....remember!!
Now we see the self-serving propaganda "bonanza" piece here in the Denver Post.
All this (industry generated)information is "discovered" and created by those hired (or fired) by Big Oil and their self-serving apologists - this includes the Denver Post, with this uncritical(pandering) front page headline piece.

Could this be the start/continuation of a manipulation of "facts" to pressure future decisions by the politicos of Colorado(and others) to continue the inane use of carbon based energy sources at the continuing harm of the environment and health of the people - all for idolatry to the dollar.
Let's build more pipelines!!

Really! There is a sucker born every minute.

[NDBob]

01:17 PM on 11/15/2011

Drill, Baby, Drill!

[Ron Booth]

01:16 PM on 11/15/2011

A billion barrels sure sound like a lot until you consider that the United States of America consumes 18,690,000 bbl/day so we're looking at roughly 50 days worth of oil with this find.

So if we can make about 7 more finds like this we will extend the amount of oil that this country consumes and that can be found on our own soils by about 1 year!

[realityCheckInTheMail]

10:04 PM on 11/19/2011

Well, the correct figure to use would be US oil imports, not US oil consumption. The US is currently importing around half it's oil, so this is 100 days of oil, not 50.

And shale oil discoveries are easily about 7X this size, so it's around 2 years worth of imports.

But the bigger story is how unexpected these oil plays are. The trend is for more and more American oil. Some poeple think this is a bad thing, others think its a good thing.

[Ron Booth]

12:51 PM on 11/15/2011

Discovering more oil reserves is a lot like discovering that there is more heroin to be had except for one major difference, there is a finite amount of oil on this planet and there are nearly unlimited opportunities to grow poppies to produce heroin.

The reality is that regardless of new discoveries of oil that is yet 'untapped' there is a finite amount and that we might be better served by carefully guarding any and all reserves that we have here in our country for future use rather than exploiting it as soon as possible, exhausting it and going right back to being dependent on foreign supplies.

Because oil/gas prices are fixed on the world market the fact that this oil comes from within as opposed to imported has no effect on the price to consumers.

Yes, if we were to exploit these reserves ASAP it would provide some immediate jobs but the quicker we exploit those reserves the quicker those jobs disappear and the less of this rapidly dwindling resource (worldwide & nationally) that remains under our control.

[Joe Padilla]

04:17 PM on 11/15/2011

I'm not so sure that oil is finite. A lot of scientist believe is regenerating itself in the earth's crust.

[SubgeniusMustHaveSlack]

04:42 PM on 11/15/2011

"A lot" of scientists?

Cite just one that is even remotely credible.

[PuSencer]

05:25 PM on 11/15/2011

of course it's regenerating. it took tens of millions of years to build to the levels which we've been recklessly extracting for years. in just a few tens of millions of years, it'll be right back

[Ron Booth]

12:42 PM on 11/15/2011

Some realities to consider with regard to oil reserves here in Colorado and within the U.S and it would be wise of us to consider not only the short term benefits/downsides but also the longer term consequences of the decisions we make today and I'm talking about the likely impact 50, 100 years or more down the road.

Obviously, we need oil, if all our automobiles were running on alternative energy we still need it to manufacture a host of products, build our roads, lubricate machinery and a long list of other needs.

Stop to consider that as we and the world deplete oil reserves everywhere, this resource, over time will become of increasing value to the U.S. and the rest of the world both in monetary terms and as a source of independence from energy sources beyond our shores.

Should we jump up and down and go ' whoopee we got tons of oil here ' and just start sucking it out of the ground and gobbling it up because we can? Saudi Arabia just 6 decades ago had reserves which have peaked and are destined to be depleted in the next 30 year. Less than 100 years after major production began.

I think we can all agree that the world's/nation's oil reserves are a finite resource, when its gone, that's IT!!

How do we best manage this resource for today, tomorrow and for 100 years from tomorrow?

[craneman]

12:24 PM on 11/15/2011

Now the oil-severence tax needs to be increased to be in line with Utah & Wyoming----Fat chance

[Durango]

12:19 PM on 11/15/2011

It would be nice if the article mentioned the source of the oil and natural gas. Judging from the "horizontal drilling" it is presumably it is in shale deposits. Of which there are many in the Western United States. The Mancos Shale in the San Juan Basin being one of the largest. So much for "Peak Oil." Always sounded like oil conmpany propaganda to me. They rolled it out when they artificially inflated the price of oil.