News about massive oil and gas reserves identified in southwest Wyoming’s Mowry Shale formation has Josh Sorensen of Rock Springs reflecting on past booms.
As president of Mountain States Pressure Service, Sorensen has over the years positioned his Rock Springs-based oil and gas well services company based on demand from producers moving into promising new territory.
"I remember when the Bakken was announced in North Dakota. I remember it started off and it was just kind of a few people and then all of a sudden everybody was racing up there," Sorensen told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday, reacting to this week’s announcement from the U.S. Department of Interior about the Mowry Shale.
Based partly on research from the University of Wyoming, the federal Department of the Interior revealed the Mowry Shale holds 473 million barrels of oil and 27 trillion cubic feet of natural gas across southwestern Wyoming, Colorado and Utah.
Sorensen said he doesn’t know if he may be on the cusp of witnessing the beginning of another boom, but he was especially interested to hear the Mowry appears to hold significant amounts of both natural gas and oil.
The Bakken “was really fluids driven,” said Sorensen, meaning producers came to extract the oil and at first, burned off the natural gas that came with it until pipelines started delivering Bakken natural gas to market.
Wait And Watch
Future plays on the Mowry Shale — which covers most of southwest Wyoming and parts of Utah and Colorado — might be “fluids driven” as well, said Sorensen, meaning the possibility of oil plays will be what really attracts producers to the formation.
"I mean, the most important thing is the oil. Gas is so prevalent that it's hard to have pure gas plays," Sorensen explained, offering the point of view of a well service provider.
For 26 years, Sorensen has grown Mountain States into what the company website describes as the largest independent snubbing company in the Rocky Mountains.
Snubbing is the service of safely inserting pipe and tools into a well that is still under pressure — or taking them out — without shutting the well down.
Sorensen’s team runs three hydraulic rigs that push or pull the pipe against the pressure inside the well, allowing work to be done while the well stays “live.”
How many newly drilled wells might go live across the Mowry Shale? Sorensen can only guess.
Sorensen went on to describe his take on the pro-energy politics of the moment as “counterintuitive” and based on trends he’s observed since the late 1990s.
Sorensen described himself as a Trump voter who supports the new administration’s industry-friendly push. He welcomes the Bureau of Land Management’s plans to streamline the leasing process for oil and gas producers on federal land.
But Sorensen doesn’t necessarily believe the pro-energy federal policies and recent discoveries in the Mowry Shale add up to boom times for Southwest Wyoming’s oil and gas industry.
“The previous administration's energy policy was so bad that they were creating more need,” he said. “They were actually driving us towards a boom because we were going to drop our production too much.”
He explained that restrictive energy policies can create pent-up demand that eventually leads to drilling booms.
"Our best year is 2012 — ever. That was after years of Obama policies," he said, acknowledging his worst year was 2020, before COVID hit and oversupply drove prices down.
"I don't approve of the Democrats’ policy at all,” said Sorensen. “I just know it works out better for us to make a buck. But it's not smart. It's a horrible way to do it.”
View From Jonah
Paul Ulrich, vice president of government and regulatory affairs at Jonah Energy, sees the Mowry discovery as validation of what Wyoming operators have long believed.
"This is significant,” Ulrich said. “It validates what a lot of operators and others have known for years, and that is Wyoming sits on tremendous natural gas resources.”
When asked about the historical significance of the announcement, he added, "With the size of what's ultimately potentially recovered in the Mowry, this is a tremendous find. It's got the potential to help fuel Wyoming's economy for a very long time."
Ulrich emphasized that managing both supply and demand will be crucial.
While the discovery adds to Wyoming's resource base alongside existing fields like Jonah Field and Pinedale Anticline, he stressed the importance of infrastructure development, including potential West Coast Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) export facilities.
"We need to ensure in Wyoming we've got the supply, which we do. And we need to keep adding on exciting discoveries like the Mowry, and also spend a tremendous amount of time working on the demand side," Ulrich said, mentioning opportunities in powering AI data centers and increasing LNG exports as a way to develop a global demand for Wyoming LNG.
‘Map, Baby, Map’
To put the recent news about the Mowry Shale in perspective, the potential to extract 473 million barrels of oil and 27 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from what adds up to a 6.7 million-acre area puts the Mowry’s potential on par with the Bakken in North Dakota and Jonah Field, which is just to the north of the Mowry.
As of February 2025, the Jonah Field has produced more than 82 billion cubic feet of natural gas since 1988 — making estimates for Mowry Shale holdings in natural gas more than 300 times larger than what’s been pulled out of the Jonah Field so far.
In comparing oil reserves, Wyoming's 2024 oil production totaled about 107 million barrels, according to the University of Wyoming. That suggests the Mowry Shale alone holds enough oil to meet the state’s current annual production demand for more than four years.
The U.S. Geological Survey's assessment found that since exploration began in the 1950s, the Mowry system has already produced approximately 7.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas — about three months of U.S. consumption — and 90 million barrels of oil, or four days' supply for the nation, according to DOI documents.
A recently released USGS assessment covered the Mowry Composite Total Petroleum System, which includes the Dakota Sandstone, Muddy Sandstone, Mowry Shale and Frontier Formation. These formations contain deposits from a shallow, prehistoric ocean that once covered most of the Rocky Mountain region.
“USGS energy assessments typically focus on undiscovered resources – areas where science tells us there may be a resource that industry hasn’t discovered yet,” said Acting USGS Director Sarah Ryker. “In this case, our assessment found substantial undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and gas resources.”
“This new USGS assessment underscores the role of American energy resources in strengthening our energy independence and driving economic development across the West,” said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, who is from North Dakota and had a front row seat for the “Bakken Boom.”
“Public lands in southwestern Wyoming hold significant potential, and this science-based evaluation provides critical data to help inform responsible resource management,” added Burgum. “We ‘map, baby, map’ to provide updated estimates of recoverable oil and gas and equip decision-makers, communities and industry with the knowledge they need to support job creation, domestic energy productionand long-term economic growth.”
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
