John B. Curtis¹

(1) Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO

ABSTRACT: An Overview of Remaining Rocky Mountain Natural Gas Resources

Projections by United States government and gas industry research organizations indicate that U.S. gas consumption could increase by up to 50%, from the current 22 trillion cubic feet to in excess of 33 trillion cubic feet per year by the year 2015. The Rocky Mountain region contains the largest remaining potential gas resource, outside of the Gulf Coast and Mid-Continent regions of the country.

Assessment of a natural resource is a time-dynamic process. Because this process involves estimating the location and magnitude of an inherently unknown quantity, the accuracy of our assessment may be considered to be limited by 1) our perception and understanding of the origin and occurrence of the resource, 2) the quality and distribution of available data from which to project our estimates, and 3) the methods that we employ to facilitate the assessment.

A comparison is made of the gas resource assessments of the Potential Gas Committee for the Rocky Mountain region for the time period 1990-2000. The comparison is for 16 geologic provinces in the region. Additionally, Rocky Mountain gas resource estimates from the 1995 U.S. Geological Survey National Assessment, the 1999 National Petroleum Council study, and the 2000 Gas Technology Institute Baseline Projection establish a range of assessed resource values for the region.

Gas price projections by the Gas Technology Institute and U.S. Department of Energy are examined in light of 1) gas price differentials with other Lower 48 producing regions, 2) the effects of pipeline capacity constraints to other market regions, and 3) the realities of the summer and fall 2000 natural gas price spikes.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90906©2001 AAPG Annual Convention, Denver, Colorado