Bob McCarty Writes

"Piceance Basin, Western Colorado" -- Photo by Bob McCarty

As I write this post, I’m sitting near Gate 4 at the airport in Grand Junction, Colo., waiting to catch a 7:21 p.m. (Mountain) flight to Denver en route to St. Louis.  Where I am, however, is not nearly as important as where I’ve been; I spent last night and most of the day today learning from Williams Companies employees about their ground-breaking work in the natural gas business on Western Colorado’s Piceance Basin.

Operating some 30 minutes from the Utah border in Garfield and Rio Blanco Counties, the 250 employees of the Tulsa, Okla.-based company apply cutting-edge drilling technology to become Colorado’s largest natural gas producer by daily volume — and a leader in environmental stewardship to boot!

During the next few days, I will share what I learned — and I learned a lot — in the form of facts, observations and recollections from my trip sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute.  In fact, here’s one thing I learned:

Piceance (pronounced “pee-ahnce,” not “Pic-ee-ahnce”) is the Ute Indian word for “tall grass.”

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UPDATE 4/24/09: The folks at the API just posted a summary of the Piceance Basin media tour at their Energy Tomorrow blog.  It includes a lot of great photos as well as a list of media folks who attended the event.  Check it out here.

To find out what I learned about the nation’s natural gas industry during my trip to Western Colorado, click here and here.