On a 2004 field trip, Bob Peck visited with EnCana drilling consultant Don DeClue of North Valley Service and Support in Frenchie Draw. “Bob was always learning about the oil and gas industry and passing his knowledge on to the public,” said EnCana’s Eddie Carpenter.
EnCana photo
EnCana’s many hats cover civic activities
From staff & wire reports
Being active in the community and working closely with people of Fremont County is an important part of the lives of a number of EnCana Oil & Gas Inc. employees.
With a field office in Riverton, employees of the oil and gas giant are active in various organizations and events throughout the area.
“EnCana supports its employees lending a hand to the community, because we live here, and it’s a part of our lives,” said Eddie Carpenter, EnCana’s Wind River Basin operations field leader.
EnCana also has field offices in Rock Springs for the Green River Basin and Jonah for the Jonah Field. EnCana coordinates operations from headquarters in Denver.
Community involvement
Carpenter wears many hats in Fremont County, including serving as president of Friends of Fremont County Fair and teaching for the local 4-H program.
“Combining my favorite hobby with meeting new friends is anyone’s dream. I am just glad to share my passion with the community,” Carpenter said of teaching archery to 4-H members.
He has extended this passion to demonstrating traditional archery and arrow making at the 2006 Wyoming Hunting & Fishing Heritage Expo in Casper.
Carpenter is also a member of the Wyoming FFA Foundation board of directors, a member of the Group Home board of directors and chair on the Nominating Committee for the Boy Scouts of America in Riverton.
The employees in the Riverton Field Office also team up for events, including sponsoring and participating at the Fremont County Fair.
The Riverton EnCana team volunteered to serve food and refreshments at the fair’s community picnic, staffed a general information booth and purchased livestock at the junior livestock sale. The processed meat was donated to community organizations.
Environmental, Health and Safety Coordinators Kristen Juve and Lee Garza help maintain a safe community as volunteers with the local EMS.
Values
EnCana’s employees and contractors perform their daily business based on trust, integrity and respect, which set the foundation for EnCana to be responsible and build strong relationships, said Randy Teeuwen, EnCana’s community relations adviser.
“EnCana’s employees are motivated to set the bar high for performance and safety, and that is part of being a dependable neighbor,” Teeuwen said.
The EHS field coordinators and land negotiators help ensure EnCana operates safely and strives for the lightest environmental footprint.
The EHS field coordinators support operations, including drilling and workover rig inspections, safety meetings and training, incident investigation and analysis of hazard and solutions in the field.
“The best part of my job has been watching the success of my team,” Kristen Juve said of her position with EnCana as EHS field coordinator.
Juve added: “I have the privilege of working with the best operations team.”
EnCana’s land negotiators take care of oil and gas leases and surface agreements with landowners, other oil and gas companies and state and federal governments.
Land negotiators say they do their job better and enjoy it more when they have the opportunity to get to know the “neighborhood” they work in.
Judy Tatham and Mona Binion are the land negotiators in the Wind River Basin.
Habitat for Humanity
One pillar of strength in Fremont County is the Wind River Country Chapter of Habitat for Humanity, which just completed its 11th home in a little less than 10 years.
EnCana donated $45,000 in 2006 to HFH to build a home in Riverton — the EnCana/Habitat Centennial House. To further the donation, EnCana employees chipped in by installing all the insulation.
“We had underestimated how industrious, organized and hardworking the EnCana crew was, and we were done by 1 p.m. the first day, even though we had set two days and two volunteer crews for insulating the home,” said Erin Shirley, HFH’s Wind River Chapter executive director.
The project became an occasion for everyone to get together.
“It was a good team building experience for all of us because we were able to work together on something outside the oilfield. It was fun for us to all be together,” Juve said of EnCana’s volunteer day.
HFH volunteers, the partner family and students from the Central Wyoming College construction trades program built the EnCana/Habitat Centennial House. The house was completed in late February for Lucy Liedy’s family, who moved in on March 2.
The chapter began in Fremont County in 1997, and has a goal to build two homes a year, depending on funding. “EnCana is a very prominent supporter of a variety of good community projects around here. They have been incredibly generous with that support,” Shirley said. Production In 2005, EnCana contributed 13.24 percent to Wyoming’s total natural gas production as the leading natural gas producer in the state. In addition, EnCana produced 4.82 percent of the state’s total oil production in 2005 as the fourth leading oil producer.
Wind River Basin
The Wind River Basin’s current daily production of about 76 million cubic feet of natural gas yields 28 billion cubic feet in one year. That is enough to serve the total natural gas needs of about 330,000 homes for one year. EnCana currently operates approximately 350 wells, 27,000 horsepower of compression and 300 miles of gathering lines in the Wind River Basin.
EnCana drilled approximately 32 wells in 2006. An average well takes 15 days to drill.
Green River Basin
EnCana averaged 42 million cubic feet of natural gas and 500 barrels of oil daily during 2006. The main focus for 2007 will continue to be in the Wamsutter area, where EnCana plans on running two to four drilling rigs year-round. EnCana currently operates about 350 wells in the field, and the drilling phase is expected to be approximately five years.
Jonah Field
The Jonah Field is expected to produce nearly 13.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The Jonah Field accounts for 13.5 percent of natural gas produced in Wyoming and 1.5 percent of the nation’s natural gas. Jonah’s current daily production of over 750 million cubic feet yields 255 billion cubic feet in one year — enough to serve the total natural gas needs of Wyoming for 25 years.
Currently, EnCana is operating approximately 700 wells in the Jonah field. Approximately 200 wells were drilled in 2006, and the drilling phase is projected to last through 2013.
The expected productive life of the Jonah Field is approximately 60 years.
Community investment
“EnCana believes in being active in the communities where we live and work, and we work hard to make a difference by supporting important community programs, such as the Fremont County Fair,” said Joyce Witte, EnCana’s community investment adviser.
Over the past two years, EnCana donated nearly $2.5 million to nonprofit organizations in Wyoming, and $223,000 went to organizations in the Fremont County area.
“Supporting the CWC Summer Academy is a natural partnership with EnCana because the values of the program are to motivate students to pursue education and improve students’ abilities in all subjects with emphasis in math and science,” Witte said.
The Summer Academy started six years ago, and has grown almost exponentially, even though the program faced many challenges.
For the first five years of the program, the Summer Academy was funded through a Wyoming Department of Education GEAR UP grant; however, when the grant ended in 2005, CWC employees were certain the program would end.
In spite of this, an EnCana grant, a smaller GEAR UP grant and a CWC Educational Talent Search grant pulled together enough funds to expand the program in 2006.
With an initial enrollment of 45 students in its first year, the Summer Academy’s expanded class offerings brought in 315 students in 2006. The classes offered include foreign language, chemistry, robotics, math, science, music, fashion design and many others.
In the afternoons, students were able to join sport camps for tennis, volleyball, basketball, cheerleading, etc.
In the 2006 end-of-year report for the Summer Academy, one of the students said this is how school should be taught, she added, “We learn way more and it is fun.”
EnCana and the Summer Academy will continue their partnership for the 2007 session.
Scholarship program
EnCana has expanded its high school scholarship program this year for high school seniors who plan to study engineering, geology or geophysics at an accredited university or college, or a technical or trade program associated with the oil and gas industry.
The scholarship award is $2,500 per year, for up to four years, and is awarded annually to one graduating student in each school district within EnCana’s areas of operations.
Previously, the scholarship program was intended for four-year schools, however, the energy industry is constantly growing and in need of highly skilled and trained workers.
Some technical or trade jobs related to oil and gas require a two-year degree. Last year, EnCana awarded two scholarships to graduating seniors in Riverton and Pavillion pursuing degrees in engineering, geology or geo-physics. The two recipients were Sean Schaub and Mark Evans.
Wyoming has many programs offering further education for students interested in pursuing a career in the oil and natural gas industry. Western Wyoming Community College in Rock Springs was the first to offer industry programs in Wyoming at the college level with the Oil and Gas Production Technology Program and the Compression Technology Program.
The Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Training Center in Casper also trains oil and gas workers in various occupations, including drilling rig floor hands, welding, CDL truck driving and heavy equipment operation.
And recently, to help solve various energy-related issues and provide an interdisciplinary environment for day-to-day interaction between multiple industry specialties, the University of Wyoming established its School of Energy Resources and Petroleum Engineering Program.
Big year for gas
Prices down, but volume up
By Bob Moen
Associated Press Writer
Natural gas production increased 5.4 percent in Wyoming last year, the ninth consecutive year the state has recorded higher gas production.
The state produced 2.11 billion cubic feet of gas, according to preliminary numbers compiled by the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
“Wyoming was 8.9 percent of total U.S. production,” said Don Likwartz, supervisor of the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
Texas, by far the largest U.S. producer of natural gas, produces about 2.5 times more gas than Wyoming and accounted for 28.8 percent of the nation’s production, Likwartz said.
Oklahoma is just ahead of Wyoming in gas production, producing about 38 billion cubic feet more than Wyoming.
Likwartz noted that some of the production increases in Texas were fueled by companies tapping oil and gas from underground shale, an extraction process that is just beginning in Wyoming.
The Powder River Basin in northeast Wyoming continues to lead the state in gas production, with about 377 billion cubic feet last year, about 31 billion cubic feet more than 2005.
The basin accounts for about 18 percent of the state’s total production.
The Jonah and Pinedale gas fields in Sublette County also fueled the state’s gas production increase last year.
Jonah produced 291 billion cubic feet, a 10 percent increase from the previous year, and Pinedale yielded 287 billion cubic feet, a 19 percent increase.
“All the rest of the fields were barely up at all,” Likwartz said.
While Wyoming gas production numbers were encouraging, the price Wyoming gas fetches on the market still lags behind other areas of the country.
Prices for gas fed through the Henry Hub, a pipeline head in Louisiana, are about $3 to $4 more than prices going through pipelines in southern Wyoming. Prices for Wyoming gas are depressed mainly because of a lack of pipeline capacity.
The soft natural gas prices received for Wyoming gas has cost the state about $250 million in estimated revenue it had initially expected.
But Likwartz held out hope that the difference between Wyoming gas prices and the Henry Hub price might narrow with the expected completion of another leg of the Rockies Express Pipeline. The pipeline eventually will carry natural gas from Colorado and Wyoming to Ohio for distribution to markets in Midwestern and Eastern states.
The leg from Wyoming to Missouri should be done late this year or early next year, Likwartz said.
The new pipeline will increase the amount of gas that can be shipped from Wyoming and Colorado by about 1.5 billion cubic feet a day. Current capacity is about 6.25 billion a day.
