Idaho’s vision to build a viable oil industry and a natural gas business tied to the nation’s third largest dairy industry have been waylaid by low prices and limited infrastructure, clouding the vision for the future.

“Idaho gas consumers continue to benefit from low prices and plentiful supply,” said analyst Kevin Keyt, writing for the Idaho Public Utilities Commission in its latest annual report. Keyt told NGI that Idaho’s growing dairy industry and “lucrative incentives” for renewable natural gas (RNG) as a transportation fuel could be a boon for dairy operators. 

State officials are seeing “more interest in developing dairy digesters to produce pipeline quality gas, and digesters previously used to create electricity are shifting to pipeline quality RNG...