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slgwv

slgwv club

Posted: 02 Mar 2012

Taken: 27 Jun 2011

0 favorites     8 comments    264 visits

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view •
Pawnee Buttes •
Colorado •
USA •
exploration •
Chalk Bluffs •
gas •
turbines •
oil •
wind •
eastern •

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Chalk Bluffs

Chalk Bluffs
With the wind turbines just barely visible on the skyline. An oil/gas exploration derrick is at the extreme left edge of the photo.
8 comments - The latest ones
 Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)
Don Barrett (aka DBs…
You know how long they've been doing oil in Pawnee Buttes? I don't recall exploration there when I went through there in 2002
11 years ago.
 slgwv
slgwv club
I don't have references handy, but I'm sure it goes back a long ways. There would have been a lot of effort in the 70s, and some undoubtedly took place in the early days. With the price run-up since the early aughts, lots of places that had been shelved have been taken off the back burner (to mix metaphors rather badly! ;)
11 years ago.
Don Barrett (aka DBs… has replied to slgwv club
I guess I just missed it on that first trip. Am planning on going back through there in September..
11 years ago.
 slgwv
slgwv club
If the exploration was inactive when you were last thru there's not a lot to see. Just a few anonymous dead-end roads heading out into the flats, and maybe a capped-off pipe or two.
11 years ago.
 Clint
Clint
I always love a juxtaposition of turbines and drills, and I like this part of the country anyway.

I have a friend who bought a house in a subdivision on the southern end of Weld County about five years ago, next to what at the time had been some sort of shuttered extraction site. They've since unshuttered it. He tells me he's noticed a lot of new rigs popping up over the last few years, suggesting Colorado's trying to get in on the gas bonanza that's hit Pennsylvania and North Dakota.
11 years ago.
 Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)
Don Barrett (aka DBs…
The only problem with mixing energy groups here is that Pawnee Buttes is a national grasslands and nesting place of an endangered raptor (I've forgotten which). It's a rare patch of the 'flatlands' portion of Colorado that feels non-industrialized once you're in the middle of it.
11 years ago.
Clint has replied to Don Barrett (aka DBs…
To be clear, I enjoy the visual juxtaposition. :)

I'm not a big fan of the current drilling craze, and I really hate the idea of eastern Colorado turning into a forest of drilling rigs (though I once spent two hours hanging out with a guy in Genoa who would probably love the traffic that came with it.). North Dakota has gone somewhat insane in the last five years.
11 years ago.
Don Barrett (aka DBs… has replied to Clint
I had plans for exploring western North Dakota in the Fall, the area around Theodore Roosevelt NP is quite pretty and WAS very remote. From everything I'm hearing, and from what James Ruddy has said in his posts, it sounds like its gotten to be too much traffic and too congested. I know that the motel prices are poorly-maintained rooms in cheap hotels for $150/night. I'm still planning to go up there, but now planning it as a day trip but staying in South Dakota. I was in Four Corners (Farmington, NM) several years ago when drilling picked up there and the scurrying around by exploration trucks made it feel more industrial than rural.
11 years ago.

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