Members of the Utah Legislature heard a simple message from energy industry leaders and Uintah Basin officials on Monday: Business is booming, and we need your help.

Lawmakers heard the message in Duchesne County, where both oil and natural gas production has increased sharply in recent years. That's meant more jobs, more investment and more money for state coffers, but it also has put a strain on local infrastructure -- a strain that may threaten the industry's continued success in Utah.

The site visit -- which concludes today -- gives lawmakers a chance to see firsthand what the conditions are in an area that's off the Interstate 15 corridor.

The region is important to the state, said Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem.

"We view this as a statewide concern because this is an economic development engine," he said. "It has driven a significant amount of the surplus that we have.

"As good stewards, we're trying to say, 'How do we keep the surplus comingfi' "

Many of the issues brought up by oil company executives concern subjects that are outside the Legislature's jurisdiction -- the permitting process for drilling on federal lands, for example, or competition from Canadian oil. Lawmakers were urged to encourage the development of more oil refinery capacity in Utah and to help make it easier to look for energy resources on public lands.

The main emphasis, however, was on something near and dear to every local elected official's heart -- roads.

The trucks and equipment needed to extract and transport oil and gas have battered the county's roads badly. Many of them are unpaved, and those with pavement weren't designed to support heavy truck traffic.

The roads are narrow, potholed, run along steep inclines and often around blind turns.

"They've got great needs in roads," acknowledge House Majority Leader Jeff Alexander, R-Provo.

"When you have a small community like this where their economy is totally dependent on roads, and they don't get any attention, that creates big issues for them."

Roads, of course, are a big issue everywhere else too. Utah County leaders are chasing funding in an effort to head off traffic gridlock, and other fast-growing areas have the same problem.

That could make one solution that's been discussed contentious, Valentine said. Duchesne County leaders have asked that the state allocate a portion of the revenue from mineral leases or severance taxes for county road projects.

"It will be difficult to do because everybody views that they have a road problem that the state needs to take care of," he said. "The roads that they're speaking of are almost all county roads. They're not state roads.

"Our county, for example -- Utah County will say, 'Hey, we'd like to have more money for our county roads as well.' "

Even so, he added, "we're spending a lot of money on the Wasatch Front on freeways. Maybe we should be spending some money out here in local roads that are highly impacted by oil and gas development."

That development is showing growth. The U.S. Department of Energy has forecast that the Rocky Mountain region will bypass other regions of the country in energy production starting in 2010. In a fossil-fueled economy, that has impacts at all levels of the economy.

That's why what happens to the state energy industry should be important to all Utahns, said state Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo.

"Have you been to the pump lately and seen the price of gasfi" he said.

"There's more oil here -- in the tar sands, for example -- than many of the reserves in the Middle East. Absolutely, this is something that is critical not only for Utah but also for our nation. The question is, at what price, and what's the timelinefi"

Alan Choate can be reached at 344-2556 or alanchoate@heraldextra.com.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.