The Colorado Land Board and Denver International Airport are planning to cash in on the Niobrara oil boom by auctioning off thousands of acres for exploration and development later this year.
Leasing the old Lowry Bombing Range and DIA acres could yield as much as $1.5 billion in revenues and royalties, said Marilee Utter, president of Denver-based Citiventure Associates, which has been hired by the land board to develop a leasing plan.
The revenue estimate is based on a study done for the land board by Sam Gary Jr. & Associates, a Denver energy company, using existing data, Utter said.
The plan is for the land board to offer the Lowry range’s 26,000 acres in Arapahoe County as one lease, Utter said.
DIA is still evaluating how much of its 34,000 acres will be made available for oil and gas development, said airport spokeswoman Laura Coale.
“It will be a public process,” Coale said. “We will have to get City Council approval.”
The land board manages some 3 million acres of land and 4 million acres of mineral rights in Colorado, with revenues going to K-12 education and school construction in the state.
The Niobrara — a geological formation stretching along the Front Range from Wyoming to New Mexico — has been shown to hold oil, with some big-producing wells in Weld County.
“This is a great opportunity for the state, but the goal is to do it right,” Utter said. “We are trying to balance conservation and oil development.”
Mark Jaffe: 303-954-1912 or mjaffe@denverpost.com
