Eastern Region Economist Discusses 2013 Year-in-Review and What to Expect on the Horizon

Eric Martinson, regional Economist for DWS, joins Chris Piner on Local Point as they discuss the economy and employment trends of the Uintah Basin.

County seeks Uintah’s feedback on new Book Cliffs road study

Grand County Council unanimously approved a letter asking the Uintah County Commission to perform a feasibility study for building a paved road linking the Vernal area to the Moab area. Historically, proposals to pave a road from Vernal to Moab have hit dead ends. Let’s keep in mind that this is still just a feasibility study, this doesn’t necessarily imply that the overall consensus for building a road is favorable, but it is a sign that interest in seriously reconsidering this issue may be gaining. Times Independent

Domestic Crude Oil Drives a Cautious Refining Revival

Clifford Krauss reports on the U.S.’s ever-expanding oil and gas industry, and what it means for communities who support the industry across the country. Though the article reports on plans for expansion and new refining capacities in Utah, it does not report on the unique situation faced in  Utah’s oil-and-gas-producing Uintah Basin Region. Because of a lack of immediate refining capacities and no rail infrastructure, oil companies operating in Duchesne and Uintah Counties need to have extracted crude trucked to refineries in Salt Lake City (over 150 miles away). When faced with excess supply, that is, crude that cannot be entirely accommodated by the semi-local refineries, the excess is trucked 100 miles to a rail port in Price, UT which then gets railed all the way to refineries in Texas. New York Times

British company jumps into Utah oil shale

Just weeks after Utah-based oil and gas development company Red Leaf Resources obtained the final permits for Utah’s first commercial oil shale mine, London-based TomCo Energy filed papers proposing large-scale extraction operations in southeast Uintah County. TomCo plans on licensing Red Leaf’s EcoShale technology to heat mined hydrocarbon solids into liquid petroleum. Salt Lake Tribune

Oil and Gas Royalty Split Favors Feds

According to the 2014 federal budget deal recently passed, a 51-49 percent share of royalties from the oil and gas industry slightly favoring the federal government was made permanent, a share that has been in place since 2008. Please follow the link for the article by Mary Bernard.

O&G royalty split favors feds

Eastern Region Initial Weekly Unemployment Insurance Claims

A full 13 weeks of third-quarter initial weekly unemployment insurance (UI) claims data have come in for Utah’s eastern counties – Duchesne, Carbon, Emery, Grand, San Juan and Uintah. Initial weekly UI claims for Daggett County were not provided because of its relatively small workforce. The third-quarter weekly average of county UI claims are provided for each year from 2007 to 2013.

Of the six eastern counties provided, two (Carbon and Emery) have lower average weekly UI claims in third quarter of 2013 compared to 2012. Two counties (Duchesne and Grand) show about the same average level of third-quarter UI claims. The remaining two counties (San Juan and Uintah) show higher average third-quarter UI weekly claims in 2013 than in 2012. All six counties in 2013 have lower average weekly claims than during the Great Recession highs, though Uintah County average third-quarter initial weekly claims have been increasing over the last three years.