For residents of a western valley, methane gas development has meant uncertainly, doubt, and dragging fear.
by Rebecca Clarren
photographs by Christopher LaMarca
WHEN THE LIGHT OF EARLY morning shines on the red-ribboned mesas of western Colorado’s Garfield County, and the Colorado River shimmers like a silver snake on the move, it’s easy to see why the rural people who live here say they cling to this place. Then the light catches one of the hundreds of gas wells newly set upon the land, intimating a more complex story.
Deep underneath the county’s dry sagebrush plateaus and irrigated farmland—and 250 miles north of Aztec, New Mexico—lies the Piceance (pronounced pee-awnce) Basin, home to an estimated 40 trillion cubic feet or more of recoverable natural gas, sandwiched between layers of sandstone and coal.
Running beneath a quarter of the county’s 1.9 million acres, the basin rolls west off the Rocky Mountains down to the desert country of northwestern Colorado. One of America’s richest sources of natural gas, the Piceance holds enough gas to power the nation at current consumption rates for around two years. As the price of methane—a primary component of natural gas—has quadrupled in recent years, energy companies have sprinted here to drill rock and capture gas.
Orion Magazine
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