On a natural gas drilling rig 8 miles outside this tiny desert town, roughnecks are working in windchill of minus 45 degrees, surrounded by an empty, frozen landscape.
The crew at Rig 930 thinks it is a few days from hitting the mother lode–a vein of natural gas that will warm homes, fire ovens or power electricity generators. If all goes well, the gas could be running through pipelines to the Midwest or either coast within the next several weeks.
Part of the solution to sky-high natural gas prices lies buried deep in the earth in desolate places like this. As oil corporations rake in record profits and have more money to invest in exploration, drilling rigs are rising up like great iron birds, pecking the ground for supplies that can feed the nation’s growing appetite for energy.
Scott Johnson, the on-site drilling supervisor for BP Amoco, the nation’s largest natural gas producer, is matter-of-fact about the importance of his job. “We’re helping the country out,” Johnson said.
Since natural gas prices began climbing more than a year ago, there has been a burst of activity in oil and gas country, reaching across the Gulf Coast and through Texas and Oklahoma, all the way up to the Rockies. The flurry intensified with the sharp rise in gas prices this winter.
Today, 1,121 oil and natural gas drilling rigs operate in the United States, more than double the 502 rigs at work in April 1999. Nearly 80 percent are drilling for gas, more than 2 1/2 times the number doing so 18 months ago.
“What’s unique about this boom is the focus on natural gas instead of oil,” said Mark Rubin, an official at the American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas industry group based in Washington.
Though it remains controversial from an environmental standpoint, the push to boost natural gas production makes sense economically, experts say. Demand for the fossil fuel–a cleaner, cheaper source of energy than is petroleum–is climbing.
Experts also predict use will soar more than 30 percent over the next 10 years, to more than 29 trillion cubic feet a year. Further, because natural gas is a commodity that cannot be shipped overseas as easily as oil, its prices are not subject to the whims of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Natural gas has grown in importance because of the stronger-than-expected economy in the 1990s, new air pollution regulations and restrictions on coal-burning power plants. It represents about 25 percent of the nation’s fuel supply, and 14 million people are expected to become new customers by 2015, according to a 1999 report by the National Petroleum Council, an adviser to the Energy Department.
Electricity generators are expected to account for nearly half of the new demand over the next decade. Gas-powered electricity plants are quicker and easier to build and more likely to meet air pollution standards than coal-fired power plants, according to the petroleum council. The importance of their role is underscored by the electricity crisis in California, where demand for power exceeds supplies and the need for new generating plants has become urgent.
To avoid shortfalls in natural gas markets, the National Petroleum Council urges several actions to increase supplies. Most controversial is its suggestion that more drilling and development be allowed in environmentally sensitive areas such as the Gulf of Mexico or the Rocky Mountains. In the Rockies alone, 40 percent of potential gas fields are either off-limits or severely restricted because of environmental concerns such as the desire to protect endangered species.
Environmental groups decry letting oil and gas companies onto public lands, including the 4 million-acre Red Desert surrounding Wamsutter in Wyoming. The area is home to enormous antelope herds and wild horses.
“It’s one of the great, unique, mostly untouched areas left in the U.S.,” said Mac Brewer of the Wyoming Outdoor Council, an opponent of much of the proposed oil and gas development in the area. The council and other environmental groups believe Americans should reduce consumption and that businesses should use alternative energy sources instead of giving oil corporations freer rein.
Try telling that to people in Chicago or Detroit who want to keep their thermostats turned up at night or, for that matter, to the workers in the Wyoming oil and gas fields, enduring the nastiest winter in five years.
“People want all the benefits of cheap [natural] gas, but they don’t want anything to get disturbed,” said Bill Linne, a drilling engineer from Oklahoma. Every two weeks, he drives to the Wamsutter fields and drives back home 14 days later. “Let’s face it. You have got to have the drilling, you have to have the supplies, and the natural environment, we have to protect that too. The extremists on either side are just plain wrong. What we really need is balance.”
The people who live and work in Wamsutter, 8 miles across the Red Desert from Rig No. 930, know well the ups and downs of the energy market.
This town of almost 300 people sits in the southwestern section of the state next to Interstate Highway 80. The town is mostly a jumble of trailers. There are three gas stations, two restaurants, one bar, and one church. The nearest high school, hospital, doctors and grocery store are 40 miles east, in Rawlins.
When times are good, the welders, machinists, truck drivers and well tenders who live here work the gas fields that surround the town. When times are bad, they head for work in Texas, California, New Mexico or Louisiana.
“There is nothing in Wamsutter that doesn’t depend on the oil and gas business for a living,” said Bob Ferguson, a 59-year-old trucker who also is mayor.
Because natural gas prices have doubled or tripled in many parts of the United States, BP Amoco has begun its largest exploration project in the Lower 48 states in the Wamsutter area, where it operates 475 wells. It plans to drill 120 natural gas wells this year and then 200 wells a year through 2004. When finished, the field is expected to produce 350 million cubic feet of gas a day by 2004, about what the state of Connecticut uses daily.
The company says it is minimizing the environmental impact through measures, such as cutting back the amount of land disturbed by each well location to 3.3 acres from 5 acres and insisting that subcontractors put rigorous environmental programs in place. It also hopes to reduce the amount of the gas that escapes from wells as the drilling comes to an end and hookups to pipelines are made and intends to put containers anywhere there is a chance for a spill.
Many residents say there is a world of difference from the last boom in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when corporations did not clean up.
“They’re resurfacing, reseeding. There are more roads out there now, but it’s not that much of a problem,” said Elaine Englehart, who runs D&D Oil Field Service in Wamsutter with her husband, Greg. “It’s a huge area we’re talking about here, with only a small amount of damage.”
Not so, said Jeff Kessler, conservation director for Biodiversity Associates, an environmental group in Laramie. He cites the problems that have come with more roads: fragmented habitat for wildlife, road kill, noise, more hunters and poachers, and an increase in motorized and off-road vehicles. “The landscape is being radically changed, even though the actual number of acres being affected are not astronomical,” he said.
The $500 million BP Amoco project plans to employ 400 roughnecks, well operators and service workers in and around Wamsutter. Finding skilled workers is one of the greatest challenges oil and gas companies face. After industry downsizing eliminated more than 500,000 jobs since the early 1980s, many experienced workers have gone on to other endeavors, said Roger Huschka, human resources coordinator for Nabors Drilling USA.
With recent pay raises of up to 30 percent, a beginning worker on a rig can earn $60,000 a year in the Wamsutter fields, he said.
Getting workers to stay is another thing. Most leave their families at home while they travel to wherever the work is. At sites such as Wamsutter, they live in “man camps” of up to 12 men.
The set-up, with so many men living in such close proximity with so little entertainment, helped give Wamsutter the feel of an old Western frontier town during the last boom, full of drinking, gambling and coarse behavior.
This time, residents would like to see more families move in, especially because the work looks like it is going to last for three or four years.
According to a consultant’s study, preparing for the growth would cost Wamsutter $9.6 million, a huge sum for a town whose annual budget is $315,000, Mayor Ferguson said.
“We are pulling out all the stops to see what kind of assistance we can make available,” replied Paula Barnett, a spokeswoman for BP Amoco, which has helped arrange a town meeting Thursday to listen to residents’ concerns.
People in Wamsutter want their own gas bills to decline and are pretty sure more supplies need to go to market before that happens.
Sally Garwood, who runs the Solo Oil convenience store here, has seen her home heating costs double over the last few months. “My question is, when they’re done with all this drilling, is it going to lower what people like me pay? Or are those companies out there just going to make out like bandits?”
Charles Cook, a middle-school teacher who has lived in Wamsutter for 26 years, is skeptical. He saw the good times come quickly and end fast in the 1980s.
“I would love to see this place grow. If you like to hunt, fish, camp, get away from people, it’s a great place,” he said. “But look at what has happened to the desert out here, with the drilling. The deer and antelope herds are down. There’s not many places for them to hide now. The poachers have moved in. I know we have to produce the gas. I only wish there was a different way.”
