It has been a busy end of the summer for UPA and our members. We’ve been hard at work on providing networking and community engagement opportunities that have been sorely missed over the last year and a half. On Sept. 9, we hosted our sold-out UPA Oil and Gas Classic Golf Tournament. Thank you to the roughly 500 sponsors and vendors that made it such a fantastic day.

We were also happy to see the Uinta Basin Energy Summit return on Sept. 28 with a great lineup of speakers. We heard about encouraging growth plans from our largest producers, an update on the rail project and natural gas exports, an extremely educational breakdown of what’s driving gasoline prices, and UPA hosted a panel focusing on the future of energy. We explored what the “energy transition” may actually mean and what opportunities we have to positively navigate the future as an industry of problem solvers and innovators.

We wrapped up September with our inaugural Shootout Hunger Food Drive campaign and awarded our food drive winner at the UPA Basin Shootout on Sept. 30. We were blown away by the generosity of our members, who donated over 4,200 pounds of food to the Duchesne County Food Pantry. We want to thank all that contributed – Berry Petroleum, Caerus Oil and Gas, Ovintiv, Uintah Wax/Finley, and XCL Resources – and we hope to expand participation next year. Third place went to Ovintiv at 12.6 pounds per person (a total of 1,646 pounds), second place to Uintah Wax/Finley, who totaled 17 pounds per person (and a whopping 2,242 pounds), our first prize went to XCL who donated 39 pounds per person. In addition to bragging rights, XCL gets to host our amazing food drive trophy for the year before handing it off to next year’s winner – take good care of it, team XCL!!

In addition to awarding our food drive winner, we had a great day shooting clays and catching up in the fresh air at our third annual UPA Basin Shootout. Our host, Pleasant Valley Hunting Preserve, donated two grand prizes – a 6-bird, 3-man, half-day hunt. Many thanks to them and to Utah Gas Corp and XCL, who donated shotguns for the second place winners and Caerus for the big Yeti cooler for our third place winners. We were also happy to have Beehive Insurance and Envirocare join us for the day as sponsors. A fun day was had by all, from novices to our sharp-shooting grand prize winners.

We recognize in 2021, profound challenges persist for many. That’s why we always seek to give back and are excited to see our shootout hunger food drive grow as an annual event. We are a force for good in Utah, and activities like our food drive and the countless other community-sustaining endeavors our members are committed to are proof positive of that. We will continue to look for opportunities like this and welcome input from the community.