Company Overview
Aka Energy Group is a wholly owned enterprise of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe established in 2002 to pursue business opportunities in the midstream sector of the energy industry outside the external boundaries of the Southern Ute Indian Reservation. Its primary business is to gather natural gas from producers, treat the gas to remove impurities, and process the gas to separate natural gas liquids (NGLs).
Aka is managed through its corporate office in Durango, Colorado. Aka Energy has experienced management and professional teams dedicated to providing competitively priced services to its customers in a safe and environmentally responsible manner. We can design and build systems efficiently for specific drilling projects. We have established extensive industry relationships which assist in ensuring that each project is completed on time and to specification. We strive to provide both uncompromising service to our customers and a rewarding workplace for our employees.
Southern Ute Indian Tribe
The reservation of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe lies in the northern half of the San Juan Basin, just north of the Colorado/New Mexico border. In the 1990s, the Tribe built wealth and expertise in the natural gas industry based primarily on the Tribe’s substantial land ownership in the San Juan Basin coalbed methane play. Recognizing the concentration of its assets, the Tribe set about diversifying its portfolio in the late 1990s. Today, through the Southern Ute Growth Fund, the Tribe manages a diversified multi-billion dollar portfolio of investments both on and off the Southern Ute Indian Reservation, including investments in oil and gas exploration, production, and midstream services; real estate, property development, and property management; and a variety of private equity investments.
Gilcrest Gas Plant
The Gilcrest Gas Plant and related gas gathering systems are located in the Denver-Julesburg Basin near Greeley, Colorado. In addition to gathering and processing gas on Aka’s own gathering systems, Aka’s system is interconnected to other independent gas gathering systems for moving volumes to and/or from Aka’s system to other third parties.
History
Aka got its start in the Denver Julesburg (DJ) Basin by purchasing the Gilcrest gas processing plant and the Kersey compressor station. These assets are located in Weld County, Colorado. Aka has further developed both these facilities and the gathering systems associated with them to meet the needs of producers in the DJ Basin.
In 2004, Aka Energy purchased Frontier Field Services, LLC (“Frontier”) and Lumen Energy Corporation (“Lumen”), two midstream companies with headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma. These two companies’ assets included cryogenic plants and gathering and treating facilities which are located in Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and West Texas. Aka combined the two companies’ Tulsa staffs into one office and has maintained the Lumen and Frontier names because of customer familiarity. Many of the assets were upgraded or expanded since Aka’s purchase, bringing additional value to existing customers and allowing Aka to provide service to new customers. In 2017, the Lumen and the Kelton assets were divested and in 2019 the Frontier assets were divested, both allowing Aka to focus on the Gilcrest asset in the DJ Basin.