Consider Meeker, Colorado, population 2,475. This friendly town lies in a beautiful setting beside the White River on Colorado's Western Slope. As this issue of Midstream Business goes to press, camo-clad deer hunters fill Meeker's motels and cafés, just as they do every fall.

But as big a business as hunting is, the real action in the local economy comes from oil and gas and, sadly, that line of work has not been as predictable as the area's deer herd, says Mandi Etheridge, Meeker's mayor.

"Yo-yo" comes to mind.

Meeker was at the epicenter of the 1980s oil shale mining excitement. The local airport's base operator pumped a lot of aviation gasoline and jet fuel as business aircraft filled the ramp. Workers drawn to that shale boom slept in pickups lit at night by "no vacancy" signs. The lunch rush at eating establishments was just that, with lines out the door.

By the 1990s, shale mining had died—and sadly had many of Meeker's businesses. Main Street traffic was non-existent, storefronts sat empty.

"But I think we're at a happy medium now," Mayor Etheridge tells Midstream Business. "It's been difficult for a few years but things are picking up. It's not a boom, but it's not a bust." Her hope, of course, is the upswing continues.

The business improvement comes as producers look to drill new opportunities in the Piceance Basin on the Western Slope, and midstream operators build out infrastructure to support those wells.

Our cover story updates midstream activity in the Piceance as well as the other, diverse targets along and on either side of the Rocky Mountains. But the real Rockies action right now lies on the other side of Colorado in the

Denver-Julesburg basin as drillers continue to have success targeting the Niobrara shale. Editor-at-large Skip Simmons adds a detailed technical review of current Niobrara-based midstream activity in eastern Colorado.

But the Niobrara lies below the Piceance as well, so there may be more rigs around Meeker in years to come.

The new year lies just ahead, and Midstream Business Assistant Editor

Jennifer Postel interviews several midstream executives on how they rate 2012, then asks them to stare into the crystal ball and predict what's in store for 2013. Their consensus is continued strong drilling in North American shale plays, which for the most part have little supporting midstream infrastructure, will keep gathering, processing, transmission and storage demands strong. Meanwhile,

Associate Editor Michelle Thompson reviews the biggest midstream transaction of 2012, the "once in a lifetime" acquisition of El Paso Corp. by Kinder Morgan.

I'm just now back to our Hart Energy office in Houston after a great DUG Eagle Ford conference in San Antonio that featured the first, separate midstream track to complement discussions of Eagle Ford's upstream. The response exceeded our expectations.

I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to meet a number of our Midstream Business subscribers there, visit with them and hear their ideas on how we can make this magazine better. I welcome your thoughts, too.

Looking ahead, I hope you have the opportunity to join us at Hart Energy's DUG conference in Pittsburgh in November and the Rockies Midstream conference in Denver on December 6. Both have great midstream lineups that should be of interest to many of you.

Comments