Utah Natural Gas Source

Questar Corporation has plans for next year to build a natural gas pipeline hub in northwestern Colorado; it will be a project that will make Utah and the neighboring states an important role as natural gas suppliers in Denver and the United States.

Questar will connect six pipelines serving the Rocky Mountain region and is expected that it will benefit consumers both east and west of the Rocky Mountain natural gas region by helping bring natural gas to those markets.

For natural gas users in Utah, they may pay a little bit more for their natural gas, but the state of Utah will collect some extra tax money too. "It is definitely going to have an impact on prices. The question is how much," said Alan Isaacson, a researcher at the University of Utah's Bureau of Economic and Business Research who has studied the natural gas industry in the Rocky Mountain states. Over the years, Utah consumers paid anywhere from 10 percent to 35 percent less for natural gas than the rest of the country.

Questar's proposed project, with its partner Enterprise Product Partners to build the White River Hub will be a step toward helping address the continuing shortage of pipeline capacity in the region of the project. "This hub will help facilitate natural gas flow out of the area to markets in the eastern and western United States," said Brent Kitchen, director of marketing for Questar Pipeline Co., which will oversee construction.

It isn’t the final capacity solution, "We're still going to have a natural gas bubble in the Rockies that is going to persist," the University's Isaacson said. "Additional pipeline capacity eventually will get built, but it will be a while before they catch up with increasing production."