Anadarko is a worldwide natural gas production company with “almost 10 percent of its $6 billion company budget invested in the Uintah Basin,” Brad Miller, general manager of Anadarko’s Greater Natural Buttes gas field south of Vernal, said last week. According to the company’s fourth-quarter results, Anadarko’s Greater Natural Buttes gas field “set a daily sales record of 357 MMcf/d, which increased year-over-year sales volumes by approximately 17 percent in 2009.” Miller said that translates into an economic benefit of “$27.4 million paid in taxes to the State of Utah and an additional $40 million in royalties in the past year.” Part of these earnings come from five new rigs and 47 wells drilled in the fourth quarter, for a total of 153 wells drilled in the Greater Natural Buttes field in 2009. “Greater Natural Buttes is the largest asset we have and a world-class asset,” says Miller. “On any given day, Anadarko has 180 direct employees and as many as 600 subcontractors working in the Vernal area.”
Anadarko projects that the resource-rich Greater Natural Buttes field could sustain infill drilling up to 500 wells a year, if an environmental impact statement (EIS) is completed. That’s a big if, as the scope of the Anadarko proposal would drill up to “56 wells per section in an existing gas field of about about 180,000 acres,” said Miller. Currently, the EIS sits in Washington, D.C., waiting for a mid-June expected release date for public comment. Vernal Express
