Come and listen to my story
'Bout a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer,
Barely kept his family fed.
And then one day
He was shootin' at some food,
And up through the ground came a-bubblin' crude.
The ballad of Jed Clampett, Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, 1962
A least 300 days of shine
Denver & Rio Grande and Rio Grande Junction railroad depot and frame buildings in the town of Grand Valley (Parachute) in Mesa County, Colorado. About 1915. Men stand near boxes, crates and milk jugs on the platform of the depot. A sign on the depot reads: "Western Union Telegraph & Cable Office." Girls or women are in the street near a horse-drawn wagon and a timber commercial building with signs that read: "Doll Bros and Smith, General Merchandise," "Gasoline, Polarine [?] Supplies." The "Grand Valley News" building is near a D.& R.G. freight car on tracks.
George L. Beam photo. History Colorado.
By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com
Many longtime Colorado folks can identify with mythical hillbilly characters that go from rags to riches as oil begins bubbling up out of the ground on their property. They have had reason to hope. But they also know about the flipside of boom and bust.
More than forty years ago, the young, busy, not-so-little town of Parachute died one night in its sleep. In what is still called “Black Sunday” on the western slope, Exxon pulled the plug on its $5 billion Colony shale oil project in Garfield County and laid off over 2,200 workers on May 2, 1982.
When oil prices plunged sharply, Exxon Corp. pulled the plug on its $5 billion Colony Oil Shale Project near Parachute, Colorado on a day that was called "Black Sunday," May 2, 1982. Others energy companies followed, leaving western Colorado's super-heated economy in a shambles. Many people, like the owner of this truck packed up and left Parachute on Monday May 3, 1982. Steve Groer, Rocky Mountain News.
The town's name comes from Parachute Creek which runs through the township, before it merges with the Colorado River. The Ute people originally called the creek Pahchouc (meaning twins), with early settlers mispronouncing the word as parachute. In 1908 the town was renamed Grand Valley, but in the 1980s was changed back to Parachute. The population was 1,390 at the 2020 census.
Now, with oil prices over $75 per barrel and an estimated 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels lying around in Green River shale deposit that are mostly in Colorado, it seems sort of interesting again. Especially, given the fact that new technology may allow recovery at about $30 per barrel.
Shell was working on an in-situ process that involves drilling holes, inserting heaters and slowly extracting oil out ofthe rock at its Cathedral Bluffs property in Rio Blanco County in the early 2000s and had promising results but the Mahogany Oil Shale Project was abandoned by Shell in 2013 due to unfavorable project economics.
Of course, we have seen the boom before. With gold, with silver, with uranium, and even with oil and natural gas several times.
Colorado was the second state to produce oil commercially and has usually resided in the top 10 states in terms of production over the years, according to “Historical Atlas of Colorado” by Thomas J. Noel.
“Commercial use began when Alexander M. Cassidy developed an ‘oil spring’ near Florence in 1862,” writes Noel. “To exploit the Florence Field, Cassidy formed a firm that evolved into the Continental Oil Company, or CONOCO. Headquartered in Denver until the 1930s, CONOCO inadvertently erected the first Colorado Gas station in 1909 when two large hot-water boilers were put on a warehouse platform with gas to fuel autos.”
The Florence Field, a few miles south of us, continues to produce as it has for over a century. In 1901 rich fields were found near Boulder and Rangely. The Wellington Field near Fort Collins opened in the 1920s along with the Moffat Field south of Craig. Then in the 1970s, after the 1973 Arab oil embargo, domestic crude soared and made the first billions for well-known Colorado
tycoons like Phillip Anschutz and Marvin Davis.
But as we know all too well, mineral prices travel both directions – up and down. In 1979, crude oil by the barrel was $42 and nearly everyone in the world saw its price going only upward, thus time for a $5 billion investment in “burning rocks” from the Green River basin. By 1983, oil prices had dropped like a stone to $9.
According to a story by Gargi Chakrabarty in the Sept. 21, 2005, Rocky Mountain News, “A year after Black Sunday, property foreclosures in Grand Junction and Mesa County were more than four times their 1980s numbers, and bankruptcies had doubled.”
Hillbilly dreams or not, it is something for us Coloradans to think about. As Mother Teresa once noted, “To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.”
But Colorado, with over 300 sunny days per year, has tremendous solar potential and was one of the first states in the U.S. to have a Renewable Energy Standard. There are multiple solar programs in Colorado for rooftop solar, community solar and utility-scale solar.
Currently about 8.24 percent of the state's electricity comes from solar sources ranking us 12th in the nation, but up from 25th in just 2022, and prices have fallen 42 percent in the last ten years on nearly $7 billion in solar investment. I know, prices go up and down.
But wouldn't it be nice for us local hillbillies to have energy drop out of the sky on us? Rather than waiting for it to come bubbling up out of the ground again.
Parachute Creek valley
Parachute Creek valley in Garfield County, Colorado; a man is by a car; a cabin and Roan Cliff formations and oil shale deposits are in the distance, between 1910 and 1930. Penciled on envelope: "Industry - Oil Shale - Grand Valley District," and "Box 6 Env 255."; Title supplied; penciled on verso: "It is important on oil shale locations to have water and roads nearby. At the extreme left of this picture (scarcely discernable) is Parachute Creek. The photograph was taken near Grand Valley, Colorado. The mountains in the background are oil shales," History Colorado.
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