Oil and gas companies in Colorado: Weld County's field, Denver's offices and the numbers

This report is for people looking for Colorado oil and gas employers, contractors and partners, mineral owners checking an operator, and B2B sellers planning a Colorado territory across the field and the Front Range offices.

Colorado oil and gas in Census data

US Census Bureau County Business Patterns (CBP) 2023, State of Colorado, NAICS 211 (Oil and Gas Extraction), 213111 (Drilling Oil and Gas Wells), 213112 (Support Activities for Oil and Gas Operations) and 324110 (Petroleum Refineries):

The Census Bureau doesn't publish the classes from 250 employees up; the 12 is the total less the published classes. In broader bands, 610 establishments have 1 to 19 employees, 110 have 20 to 99 and 33 have 100 or more. No petroleum refinery establishment appears in Colorado's figures, although the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) lists Suncor Energy's two Commerce City refineries, East (36,000 barrels a day) and West (67,000), as of 1 January 2026.

The field counties and the office counties

"Not reported" marks an employee total the Census Bureau flagged as high-noise: the noise it adds for confidentiality moved the value by 5% or more. The pattern is plain. Weld County, in the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin, and Mesa and Garfield counties on the Western Slope are field counties dominated by support contractors; Denver, Arapahoe, Douglas and Jefferson counties are office counties dominated by producers' offices. For the Denver offices in detail, see oil and gas companies in Denver.

These are establishments with paid employees, not companies; the self-employed aren't counted, head offices are often filed under management of companies (NAICS 55), and pipelines and gas processing sit under other codes.

Production

EIA puts Colorado's crude oil output at 475,000 barrels a day in 2025, fourth after Texas, New Mexico and North Dakota, and close to its 2020 level of 469,000. Marketed natural gas was 1,869,619 million cubic feet in 2025, eighth among states and below the 1,996,740 of 2020.

Public companies based in Colorado

Eight SEC-registered oil and gas companies give a Colorado head office on their latest 10-K. By 2025 revenue: Ovintiv ($8.91 billion), Antero Resources ($5.28 billion), Liberty Energy ($4.01 billion), SM Energy ($3.15 billion), Antero Midstream ($1.19 billion), BKV ($1.01 billion), Vitesse Energy of Greenwood Village ($274.0 million) and Altex Industries. Few of them produce much in Colorado. SM Energy is the exception that changed in 2026: it completed its merger with Civitas Resources on 30 January 2026, and its 10-K now lists Colorado's DJ Basin among its assets alongside the Permian, South Texas and Utah's Uinta Basin. Phoenix Energy One, which has a Denver office and a Denver address in SEC records, gives Irvine, California, as its principal executive office.

Rules that shape who buys what

Colorado's state regulator, the Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC), keeps operator registrations, permits and well records; its main website refused our request on 30 October 2026, but its COGIS database still serves well status and production lookups. Local governments add a second layer. Weld County created its Oil and Gas Energy Division on 8 July 2019, after state Senate Bill 181 was signed that April, and it issues 1041 WOGLA (Weld Oil and Gas Location Assessment) permits for drilling sites in unincorporated parts of the county. A new pad there means a county hearing record you can read, which tells a seller who is about to build.

Finding and checking companies

Selling to Colorado oil and gas companies

Illustrative example. The seller and its prices are invented; the counts are Census 2023 data.

Poudre Pad Services (poudre.example) builds and reclaims well pads. Its market is the field: Weld County's 118 support and 18 drilling establishments, plus the producers who hire them. It starts with the operators that have 1041 WOGLA hearings on the county's calendar, because each approved location needs a pad. If 15 operators have sites in the pipeline, two contacts each (construction manager and land or permitting lead) is 30 people; at a 10% reply rate, 3 conversations; one pad at $220,000 covers the quarter. Bebop can find the operators that match and research each one; see how to build a prospect list for the method.

Subject: Your [location name] pad in Weld County

Hi [first name],

I saw [operator]'s 1041 WOGLA hearing for [location name] is on the county calendar for [date].

We build and reclaim pads in Weld County and can hold a crew for your start date once the permit is approved.

Would it help to price the pad now so it's ready for the hearing outcome?

[Your name]

Next step: compare Colorado's head offices with the largest in the country in the list of the largest oil and gas companies.