Niobrara Oil Play: American Heritage Center Oral History Project
Channel: Wyoming Videos
Date: 2013-01-10

An emerging play, the Niobrara is in its early stages.  From 2009 through 2010, companies were busy leasing land for future drilling.  Since then, activity has greatly slowed causing a lull and a time of uncertainty for communities in Goshen, Platte and Laramie counties, although Converse County has seen a recent increase in drilling.  Community members have heard some in the oil industry compare the Niobrara Play to North Dakota's booming Bakken shale formation, although others in the industry feel that view is far too optimistic. So community members are left wondering -- is a boom on our horizon?  Will development instead be slow and steady?  Or is it all just a fizzle?  
Many oral history projects that deal with energy development's effects on a community do interviews either while the development is occurring or months or years after the fact.  This project turns the tables on that notion.  What about the expectations and impacts before development has occurred?  This oral history project is being conducted in an area of potential oil development in Wyoming's Niobrara Shale, a shale rock formation that not only covers the southeast portion of Wyoming but also Northeast Colorado, Northwest Kansas, and Southwest Nebraska.  Primarily an oil play, it is in the Denver-Julesburg Basin, which has long been a major oil and gas province.  
Thanks to funding from the UW School of Energy Resources, the UW American Heritage Center's Simpson Institute has been able to contract with UW Television to film over 25 interviews with landowners, town residents, officials, and business owners in Southeast Wyoming, with further interviews expected.  A gamut of opinions about potential oil development near their communities has surfaced in these interviews. 
The Niobrara Oil Play Oral History project is intended to be a public resource. The American Heritage Center, UW's repository of manuscripts collections, rare books, and the university archives, is developing a digital archive for all of the Niobrara Oil Play interviews and footage. 

An American Heritage Center project produced by UW Television,
Principal Researcher and Interviewer: Leslie Waggener, American Heritage Center
Videographer/Editor: Ali Grossman, University of Wyoming Television