American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2019 - 114

ConventionCoverage: The Energy Summit

Examining the shifting trends in
Colorado's market and regulatory
spheres are, from left, Jon Ecker,
chief executive officer of Genscape; Jason Oates, director of
external affairs for Crestone Peak
Resources; and panel moderator
Michael Orlando, managing director for EconONE.

country, that is another United States in
terms of energy demand in front of us."
Alice Jackson, president of Xcel Energy, said her company made a bold announcement in December: By 2030, it
would achieve an 80% carbon reduction
on its system from 2005 levels, with a
further goal of achieving a zero-carbon
system by 2050.
"You did not hear me say we would
be 100% renewables on the system," she
emphasized. "Renewables have come
down dramatically in price; the first one
that we acquired, on the wind side, was
more than 6.9 cents a kilowatt hour. We
now are acquiring them at 1.5 cents/kwhr. When you put that up against the fossil-based generation on our system, when
combined cycle is averaging about 4.0
cents/kw-hr, there is a great cost tradeoff for our customers."
Natural gas remains in the power generation equation, Jackson said, as renewables remained vulnerable to weather incidents such as polar vortexes and bomb
cyclones. "The announcement we made
has two incredibly important guardrails:
first, reliability. If we are not keeping the
lights on, we aren't doing our jobs. The
second is affordability. Right now, in
Colorado, residential customers enjoy

rates 38% below the national average.
Commercial and industrial customers enjoy rates 20-25% below," she described.
U.S. natural gas production is expected
to grow 6 billion cubic feet a day by
2024, predicted Jack Weixel, a senior director with IHS Markit, with demand increases primarily coming from LNG exports. He noted that 2019 and 2020 were
big years for companies making investment
decisions on new LNG terminals, with
completion expected in four-five years.
"LNG export capacity, particularly on
the Gulf Coast, is going to constitute
about 7.2 Bcf/d of incremental gas demand," Weixel indicated. "That is incremental to the 6.0 Bcf/d we export now.
That is a big chunk of gas demand,
roughly 13 Bcf/d in a 90.0 Bcf/d market.
Production growth is substantial, and I
say muted. You see supply lagging in
front of demand, because supply is frontloaded. Our supply is probably as long
as it has been since 2014, and that was a
weather effect, not a production effect.
The situation does not necessarily bode
well for prices."
The Moveable Middle
Colorado had the second-highest
turnout in the 2018 elections, up from

Participating in the Energy Summit's
panel discussion on natural gas in a
renewables economy are, from left, Jack
Weixel, a senior director with IHS Markit;
Alice Jackson, president of Xcel Energy;
and David Keyte, chairman and chief
executive officer of Caerus Oil and Gas
LLC. John Harpole, who served as the
Energy Summit's co-chairman, acted
as panel moderator.

114 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

fourth-highest in 2016, noted Katelyn
Roberts as she opened a panel discussion
on the state's political trends. Roberts,
chief operating officer of EIS Solutions,
added that Colorado voters also were
mailing in ballots closer to election day.
"They really are studying the issues and
researching the candidates," she said.
"Part of that is because of the level of engagement; part of it is they are starting to
get the hang of the all-mail ballot."
Based on registration numbers, Roberts
said, unaffiliated voters are key to Colorado's political future. Candidates cannot
win in the state by appealing to only Republicans, Democrats or independents,
she asserted, which makes the unaffiliated
"movable middle" a huge part of the political equation.
Those voters are not loyal to any party
for a reason, she assessed: "They want
robust environmental protection, but they
also don't want to see their neighbors
lose their jobs, and they don't want to
see industry workers out of work," she
said. "They are the same voters that swept
Democratic voters last year but also voted
down the tax increases and other progressive policies."
According to Nick Troiano, executive
director of Unite America, capturing that

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