Oil + gas in the high-tech age: oilfield advancements bolster western energy outlook.

• Author: Lewis, David

Brace yourself for impact. Colorado. Something's coming, and you might not be ready. You might not be used to it. you might even have forgotten what it is.

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It's called prosperity.

Even with our ongoing. sluggish economy, mediocre employment growth and flabby real estate markets, Colorado is already seeing the effect of powerful new developments in oil and gas exploration and production. These impacts are arising because of the application of new technology, mainly hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, in the Niobrara Formation in Weld and Yuma counties and elsewhere.

The center of the early waves of Niobrara exploration and production are being felt most keenly in Greeley, a longtime center of oil activity in Colorado.

We've been a center of oil and gas development for several decades because we've got the Wattenberg field that initiated much of the drilling decades ago in the mid-1980s we really saw a bump," says Assistant City Manager Becky Safarik. "This latest one, the Niobium, has been substantial. We feel like were the epicenter of oil and gas development in Colorado."

Hotel rooms are at. a premium in Greeley, office spare is filling up, and oil, was and dollars are flowing.

Nor is Greeley the only beneficiary of oil industry growth in Colorado. It seems easy to forget that the state is a major player in the petroleum exploration and production business. but Colorado is the nations sixth biggest natural gas producer and 12th biggest crude oil producer. And, thanks to the Niobrara and some other oil and natural gas liquids plays around the state, that latter number appears likely to rise sharply.

"Right now, Colorado is pretty important," says Dong Hock spokesman for Calgary-based EnCana Corp. "This year we think we'll have a total of around 18 drill rigs in the U.S.: nine of those will be in Colorado."

All those rigs directly translate into overall economic activity. Deeper Niobrara wells cost an average of about $7 million to drill. Companies that have found an exploration sweet spot plan to invest heavily in the state.

The Denver-Julesburg Basin a huge geological structure ranging from Denver to Wyoming without a doubt "is one of the honest basins in the country right now," says Ensign US Drilling spokesman Will Matthews. "The Bakken Shale in North Dakota is No. 1: the Niobrara is No. 2 because of the presence of liquids." namely crude oil and natural gas condensate.

The Woodlands,. Texas-based Anadarko Petroleum Corp. has leases on about 900.000 net acres in the D-J Basin and extensive holdings in the D-J Basin's giant Wattenberg Held.

The company has plans for the area calling for billions of dollars in investment.

Anadarko invested about...