The size of the prize in the Niobrara play in Colorado’s Denver-Julesburg Basin is certainly large, probably larger than most people realize. And as development of the play expands, it’s getting greener. In just over a year, liquefied natural gas (LNG) will be coming to Colorado, in part to help reduce emissions from operations in an area that combines agriculture and pockets of dense population along the Front Range of the Rockies.

Operators in the Niobrara are gearing up for what is expected to be a long and prosperous journey—and, just as important, one in which safety, the environment and community issues are front and center. Along the way, they will be spending some major cap-ex dollars: Noble Energy Inc., for one, projects outlays of $10 billion in the play over the next five years.

The forward planning for the play is reflected not only in the painstaking work being undertaken to ensure that the right configurations of targeted zones and spacing are in place to optimize recovery factors, targeted at 12%-15%. It is also apparent in the care and attention being directed toward the environment and local communities.

The new LNG plant, designed to operate at the tailgate of Noble Energy’s Keota natural gas processing plant in its East Pony area, will be the first of its kind in Colorado. The $45-million plant will have the capacity to produce up to 100,000 gallons of LNG per day, primarily for fueling the drilling rigs, frac fleet and other heavy equipment operating in the region. The LNG plant is expected to be online shortly after the Keota plant start-up, scheduled for mid-2014. Noble Energy says it will make the fuel available to other E&P companies and LNG users operating in the area.

“The LNG plant is part of Noble Energy’s continuing commitment to reduce emissions and improve the environment where we operate through the use of clean-burning natural gas as an engine fuel,” says Ted Brown, Noble Energy’s senior vice president, northern region. By displacing the use of higher polluting diesel, LNG from the Keota plant is expected to significantly reduce carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and other emissions. Noble Energy says the reductions in nitrogen oxide emissions, for example, are projected to be equivalent to removing 100,000 cars from the road per year.

The planned LNG plant is just the latest of several initiatives by Noble Energy. The company helped facilitate the construction of four public compressed natural gas (CNG) stations in Weld County, and it committed $5 million to provide Weld County schools with CNG school buses and to construct a CNG refueling station. Noble Energy is also converting its truck fleet in the D-J Basin to CNG; at the end of 2012, it had 33 “super-duty” trucks running on the fuel.

The intensity of truck traffic on local roads is expected to decrease dramatically, as Noble Energy makes use of an extensive—and increasing—infrastructure of pipelines.

“In 2013, we’re going to take 225,000 truckloads of oil and water off the roads,” Brown says. “We have a complete water management plan that we put in place over the last couple of years, including how we procure the water, how we transport it, how we store it, and how we recycle it.” Noble Energy uses “nontributary water”—water from greater depths that is not sought for public water supplies.

“We’re going to be focusing on reducing our footprint as we continue to develop this play,” Brown says. “I think we have an opportunity in the Wattenberg, like no other play in the U.S., where we can really be a model for development by utilizing pipelines to transport oil and water, by more pad drilling, by using LNG.”

These environmental considerations, of course, add to the already very tangible benefits accruing from the ring of hard dollars and cents hitting the cash register in Weld County, in the play’s core. Noble Energy and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. each paid over $50 million in property taxes to Weld County in 2011—the two highest payments in the county’s history—with the companies’ combined $109 million representing more than double prior-year payments totaling $48.2 million.

The trickledown benefits of these tax revenues are evident at Aims Community College in Greeley, Colorado. Already benefiting from wells drilled on its lands by Synergy Resources Corp., Aims receives funding based on property tax revenues and—aided by the strength in oil and gas prices—has been able to hold tuition rates flat for a second year in a row. Can you spell co-exist?