Methane boom has Colo. landowners worried

Energy industry jobs return, as does contamination and explosion risks

	Richard Goodwin exits his truck near the pipe that marks the location of a natural gas well on the property of Bruce Hopke west of Walsenberg, Colo. Residents are struggling with the development of natural gas fields near their homes and support stronger protections for landowners.
David Zalubowski / AP

updated 1:33 p.m. ET April 13, 2008

WESTON, Colo. - A hamlet near here of wooded gulches, rocky outcrops and views of the snowy tops of southern Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo mountains is the perfect escape for retirees and telecommuters who’ve settled in.

But people who bought lots on the 4,000-acre North Fork Ranch about 200 miles south of Denver, hoping to leave behind big-city hassles, worry when they flip on a switch or take a drink of water. They’re afraid that volatile methane gas from drilling in the area’s coal seams could seep into their water wells or migrate inside their homes.

That’s no idle fear. A house under construction near the subdivision exploded last April when methane gas leaked from an abandoned well and into the building. Two water wells in the subdivision were damaged in 2006 during gas drilling.

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Pioneer Natural Resources, a Dallas-based energy company, drilled new water wells, provided a filtration system and settled for an undisclosed amount with one family. The company, which contends it’s unclear whether it caused the problems, hasn’t settled with the other family.

“You don’t know day to day when you turn on your faucet whether you’re going to have good, clean water or whether there’s going to be chemicals in there that you’re unaware of,” said Tracy Dahl, a design engineer who built a home atop a mountain on North Fork in 1995.

Higher natural gas prices and the push for domestic energy development have made the Rockies’ unconventional sources more economical. That’s created conflicts with the area’s growing population, most of which lives on a split estate: when one party owns the land and another owns the minerals underneath.

The split occurred across the West as the federal government granted homesteads but retained the mineral rights, or when people sold the land but kept the minerals. Federal and state laws give mineral owners or leaseholders the right to reasonable use of the surface to extract the minerals.

Most of the gas drilled in the Raton Basin, which includes the ranch, is from coal-bed methane — gas trapped in coal seams that once provided a thriving coal-mining industry. Roughly 2,600 coal-bed methane wells have been drilled.

Methane gas was a liability in coal mining because of its volatility, but then companies started tapping it as a fuel source. Pumping groundwater relieves the pressure that traps the gas, raising concerns among landowners about the effects on the water table and drinking water wells.

The Raton Basin is one of the hot spots of an energy boom rippling throughout the Rockies. There are roughly 34,000 active wells across Colorado and tens of thousands more are expected over the next 20 years.

Warren McDonald, who ranches west of North Fork, has a good relationship with Pioneer Natural Resources.

“Typically, the people having the problems moved from cities and towns. They think they’re going to go up to the wilderness and live in harmony with nature, but those days are kind of gone,” said McDonald, whose family has ranched in the area since 1890.

McDonald said energy development is a big boost for ranchers and farmers like him who own some minerals because they get royalty payments. Jobs, business and tax revenue are all up.

“It’s night and day from when the coal mines shut down in the ’90s,” McDonald said.

“I saw the downside when the coal mines closed,” said Glenn Moltrer, a businessman who heads the local chamber of commerce. “People actually put dummies in the windows of stores (in Trinidad) to make it look like something was there besides vacant storefronts.”

On River Ridge Ranch, a rural subdivision near Walsenburg about 40 miles north, the state has halted gas production so the operator, Petroglyph Energy of Boise, Idaho, can figure out how methane is getting into water wells and how to stop it.

CONTINUED: "It’s a heckuva problem”

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