Industry report: Colorado competes among world’s top gas-producing nations

If it were an independent country, Colorado would rank 19th in the world in production of natural gas, according to a report by an energy-industry group as part of its public-relations campaign to counter opposition to fracking and fight new government regulation.

“This is what energy security looks like,” said Tracee Bentley, executive director of the Colorado Petroleum Council, which was founded earlier this year as a Colorado office of the American Petroleum Institute. “Thanks to innovations in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, Colorado now outpaces seven of 12 OPEC nations in natural-gas production. Rising domestic production has helped to reshape global markets and revitalize job creation here in the United States.”

According to the API report, Colorado’s natural-gas output of 4.45 billion cubic feet per day would rank it 19th among the world’s top gas-producing countries, exceeding nations such as the United Kingdom and Venezuela in 2012, the most recent year for which consistent international data is available. The state’s rapid growth in shale production, which the API media release points out as being unlocked by hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, has helped the United States take the top spot among global producers and places Colorado sixth among all U.S. states.

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API, which for years has purchased advocacy advertising on television, radio and the Internet to trumpet the economic benefits of increased domestic oil and gas production, opened the Colorado office in January in response to the state’s reputation as a hotbed of political conflict over the industry’s practices, especially along the urbanized Front Range. Voters in several communities passed bans or moratoriums on fracking within their boundaries and other restrictive measures were headed for the 2014 statewide ballot before Gov. John Hickenlooper struck a compromise by launching a task force to issue recommendations.

Opponents were re-energized in April by a U.S. Geological Survey report linking small earthquakes in areas such as Weld County to injection of wastewater from oil and gas production into disposal wells. The industry’s mounting advocacy campaign also comes as controversial proposals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Keystone XL pipeline and tightened air- and water-quality standards are being debated in Washington.

Bentley, who lives in Severance, had been Hickenlooper’s legislative director and senior adviser on energy and agricultural issues before resigning to start API’s Colorado office.