New Energy Capital.

• Author: Rundles, Jeff
• Position: RUNDLES wrap-up - ConocoPhillips purchase property in Louisville, Colorado to develop a corporate learning center and a global technology center - Viewpoint essay

Ever since I heard about the ConocoPhillips purchase of the former StorageTek property up on the Boulder Turnpike, I can't keep it out of my mind. I have been covering economic development in Colorado for more than 30 years, and this one ranks up higher than anything I have seen in my experience.

It makes me curious, too, not just for what is being said but also what isn't being said. I am going out on a limb here, reading between the lines, but I happen to think this deal is potentially the greatest boon to the Colorado economy in, well, forever.

You'd never know it from what ConocoPhillips itself is putting out. So far, all CP has said is this: "ConocoPhillips recently purchased property in Louisville, Colorado, on which the company plans to develop a corporate learning center and a global technology center," adding, "There are many new and expanded research and development opportunities that we want to explore further."

I have heard Gov. Ritter speak almost peripherally about the CP deal in two separate talks, and he is stressing what all governors stress: new jobs. Chamber of commerce types, too, are hyping employment, saying that the 432-acre site, once built-out to CP standards and ready for its mission in 2011 or 2012, could support some 4,000 "high-paying" jobs.

This does represent new jobs, but I think--I feel it in my bones--that the CP deal represents far more.

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I have no inside knowledge, but if you look at all that is happening on the energy front these days--and CP, the fifth-largest petroleum refiner in the world, is a big energy company--the Colorado site is a natural for the development of what is becoming known as "new energy."

You can't really call it alternative fuels as it involves a lot of stuff only some lab-ensconced chemist/engineer is now just thinking about. Biofuels. Coal gasification. Fuel cells. Hydrogen. Oil shale. Tar sands. I'm no scientist, but I have an idea that 20 years from now I'll drive a car powered by moonbeams, and that its development as a fuel will take place between Denver and Boulder on the CP R & D campus.

Think about it. This new CP campus...