Energy policy is shaped in Washington, but its effects are experienced in communities and worksites across the country. To help connect those two perspectives, the American Energy Policy Center (AEPC) hosted congressional staff in Pinedale, Wyoming, for AEPC’s inaugural educational field tour. During the August 10–13 tour, participants received a firsthand look at how American natural gas is produced and how energy development intersects with water management, land stewardship, wildlife conservation, and the surrounding community.
The drive from Jackson to Pinedale begins in the mountains and ends in the high desert. The road follows the Hoback River before the landscape opens into broad stretches of sagebrush framed by the Wind River Range. Pronghorn appear along the roadside. Cattle graze behind wire fences.
That transition from mountain corridor to working energy landscape offered an appropriate introduction to AEPC’s inaugural field tour, underscoring a central theme of the visit: that energy policy is not confined to statutes and hearings, but is embedded in the physical landscapes and working communities where energy production actually occurs.
The Bureau of Land Management describes the Pinedale Anticline as approximately 198,000 acres of rolling sagebrush containing one of the country’s richest concentrations of natural gas. Roughly 80 percent of the area is federally owned.[1] Farther south, the Jonah Field spans another 30,000 acres, approximately 94 percent of which is federal land.[2]
PureWest Energy, which operates on the Anticline and opened its operations for the tour, is Wyoming’s largest natural gas producer, with more than 3,400 operated wells and aggregate gross operated production of approximately 630 million cubic feet equivalent per day as of April 2024. Its position in the Pinedale Field provides access to markets across North America and is particularly well situated to serve the western United States.[3]
Those figures help explain why federal policy plays a significant role in the pace and scope of development. Permitting timelines, wildlife stipulations, seasonal restrictions, environmental reviews, and land-management decisions directly shape when, where, and how work can occur.
The landscape supporting this development is also home to mule deer and pronghorn migration, greater sage-grouse habitat, ranching operations, and communities whose schools, roads, businesses, and public services are connected to the region’s natural-resource economy.
At the operational sites of PureWest Energy, participants traced the physical process of producing natural gas, beginning with drilling and continuing through production.
Standing near a drilling rig makes clear that a well is not simply a hole in the ground. It is the product of extensive coordination among geologists, engineers, equipment operators, safety professionals, environmental specialists, and contractors. Each drilling stage depends on a sequence of equipment, materials, permits, and people arriving at the right place at the right time.
While on site, participants discussed the benefits of commingling: combining natural gas from multiple leases or units into a single stream for processing through shared equipment. In an area with federal, state, and private mineral interest, commingling can allow operators to use shared gathering and measurement infrastructure, reducing duplicative facilities, surface disturbance, and operating costs.[4]
Because production must still be accurately allocated to each lease, commingling requires BLM approval and reliable measurement and reporting methods. The discussion showed how a technical accounting rule can directly influence both the physical footprint and the efficiency of operations.
The distances between stops were instructive in their own right. Moving through the field revealed the network that connects individual operations: access roads, gathering lines, water infrastructure, production equipment, and the trucks and crews responsible for maintaining them.
Some of the most revealing stops involved infrastructure that would never appear in a photograph of a drilling rig.
Water management is an essential operation that occurs throughout the entire lifecycle of oil and gas operations. Effective water management reduces freshwater consumption, lowers trucking and disposal costs, and reduces environmental and community impacts. Participants followed that system through water-transfer operations and recycling infrastructure, learning how water is collected, treated, stored, and moved back into the field for reuse.
PureWest has reported using 100 percent recycled water for its completion operations for more than a decade.[5] Recycling water at scale requires treatment capacity, storage, pipelines, monitoring, maintenance, and careful coordination with the timing of field operations.
The water system demonstrated that environmental performance is often inseparable from operational design. Reusing water can reduce freshwater demand and truck traffic, but achieving those benefits requires significant infrastructure and long-term planning.
Pinedale is often discussed as an energy-producing region, but it is first a community.
Conversations with ranchers, local leaders, industry employees, and other stakeholders demonstrated how development supports high-quality jobs, sustains local contractors and small businesses, and generates revenue for schools, roads, emergency services, and other public priorities throughout Sublette County.
Pinedale Mayor Matt Murdock put the impact of local energy production in plain terms:
It has meant not only revenue for the town, it’s meant revenue for our county, revenue for our state, but it means less expensive energy for our nation. It gives us the ability to grow and to have a lifestyle and quality of life that very few people around this world actually have, and that’s the result of people working really hard and taking good care of what we have here.
The industry’s presence is also reflected in long-term community partnerships. Producers and their employees support local nonprofits, conservation programs, youth activities, and civic organizations, investing in the communities where they live and work. These relationships have made natural gas production an important part of Pinedale’s identity alongside its ranching heritage, outdoor traditions, and deep connection to the land.
For Mayor Murdock, that connection is personal.
Our energy companies have actually been involved in the Pinedale community. Our energy companies know our nonprofits, they know our schools. They help in many ways. They are personally volunteering. From our perspective, these are not just oil and gas workers, they are Pinedale residents who actually make our town better.
AEPC is grateful to PureWest Energy and the employees, land managers, conservation partners, ranchers, and community leaders who shared their expertise. Their insights provided participants with a deeper understanding of how responsible energy development supports communities, drives innovation, and advances the careful management of land, water, and wildlife.
[1] Bureau of Land Management, Pinedale Anticline Project Office (PAPO), Accessed August 2026
[2] Bureau of Land Management, Jonah Interagency Mitigation and Reclamation Office (JIO), Accessed August 2026
[3] PureWest Energy, PureWest Energy, Accessed August 2026
[4] Bureau of Land Management, Commingling of Oil and Gas Production, Accessed August 2026
[5] PureWest Energy, PureWest Energy Releases 2023 Corporate Responsibility Report, Accessed October 2024