Resources:   Lands - Water - Energy  |  About Us  |  Events  | Media/Docs  |  Donate

WRA Releases New Report

Efficient Use of Natural Gas Can Protect Sensitive Lands

Western Resource Advocates recently released a new report, Using Natural Gas More Efficiently: Saving Money and Protecting our Western Way of Life, that shows that the West’s rural communities and sensitive public lands could see significant relief from the pressures and impacts of an ongoing natural gas boom if Congress enacted broad energy efficiency standards.

Using Natural Gas More Efficiently: Saving Money and Protecting our Western Way of Life is especially timely as the West’s public lands are increasingly being drawn on for oil and gas development, consumers are paying high prices for natural gas, and the Energy Bill is being examined by national leaders. The report calls for a national commitment to use natural gas more efficiently to reduce demand, save billions of dollars, make our industries more competitive, and decrease the intense pressures to develop oil and gas in places and ways that damage the West’s long-term sustainability.

Natural gas development is currently outpacing historic drilling records in Wyoming’s Upper Green River and Powder River Basins, the Piceance Basin of Colorado and Utah, and the San Juan Basin of Colorado and New Mexico. WRA’s report is the first of its kind to show how the reduction in demand that results from efficiency measures would give federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management the time necessary to ensure that natural gas development in the West is done responsibly.

The following are available on this website:

• Using Natural Gas More Efficiently: Saving Money and Protecting our Western Way of Life (full report) (PDF, 2.5 mb)
• Read the executive summary of the report.
• Read our policy recommendations for including measures in a Federal Energy Bill to achieve the efficiency savings called for in the report. (or download the Word document, 40k)