Natural gas back on the table

Natural gas could be back on the table for Sundance. At last week’s regular meeting of the city council, Mayor Paul Brooks announced he had rekindled discussions over bringing this new energy source to town and was hopeful there might be some movement in the near future.

“This is probably the time to strike,” he said, referring to the infrastructure and pandemic-related funding that is currently on the table.

Brooks told the council that he had met with Black Hills Corp recently and had also enlisted the help of an expert. Things have changed since the last time the idea was explored, he said.

The people who create jobs in industrial business are not crazy about propane at this point in time, he said. Meanwhile, Sundance has seen a lot of new development recently and changes in needs regarding heating and power.

Natural gas has been a long-running goal for the mayor, and has cropped up several times during his tenure. In 2015, Black Hills Corp stated that Sundance was among the communities being looked at by a statewide committee instituted by Governor Matt Mead, with the goal of extending natural gas into communities currently served by propane.

Brooks last made a push to obtain natural gas in 2018, when a representative from Wyoming Rural Development proposed the idea of partnering with the city. The main roadblock was how to get the natural gas to town in the first place, which requires a transmission line.

With input from Powder River Energy and additional interest from Pine Haven, Brooks pursued conversations to discover whether it might be financially feasible, but progress faltered.

The mayor has not given up, and said Black Hills Corp had agreed to come to Sundance to study the city again and develop an understanding of how things have changed and whether the idea is still feasible, or is now even more so.