The revised draft rule removes a requirement that oil and gas operators seek approval of residents for drilling within 2,000 feet of homes

Look West: Public lands and energy news from the Center for Western Priorities


** Colorado's proposed oil and gas rules would weaken protections
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Wednesday, August 7, 2024
A pumpjack in western Colorado, Jeffrey Beall via Wikimedia Commons ([link removed]) , CC BY 4.0 ([link removed])

In 2019, the Colorado legislature overhauled how the state regulates oil and gas development, including requiring an analysis of the cumulative impacts of oil and gas development on communities and wildlife. But a new draft rule implementing the cumulative impacts provision has been weakened after pushback from the oil and gas industry, the Colorado Sun reports ([link removed]) . An earlier draft of the rule included a requirement that an operator secure the approval of residents before drilling within 2,000 feet of homes. The most recent draft, however, requires only that an operator conduct a more rigorous analysis of locations that will be within 2,000 feet of homes, and that an operator employ best management practices to mitigate the impacts of drilling.

Current regulations require a 2,000-foot setback from homes, schools and child-care centers, and other high-occupancy buildings, but operators can get around this by showing that they can provide "substantially equivalent protections," such as through the use of emissions-capturing equipment, or by securing the approval of residents. While any individual project may be able to mitigate its impacts sufficiently to comply with the setback rule, the proposed cumulative impacts rule is supposed to help the state consider the ways in which the impacts of the many wells can add up for nearby communities, even if each individual well in isolation is in compliance with the setback rule. In 2023, 19 of the 71 oil and gas development plans approved by the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission—more than one quarter of plans approved—were inside the 2,000-foot setback, according to
([link removed]) the Colorado Sun.

In a statement ([link removed]) to the Colorado Sun, the Commission said that, "given the vigorous debate on this issue in parties’ prehearing statements, staff decided to provide an alternative in this draft so that parties can provide their thoughts on one or both approaches in their responses." Mike Freeman, an attorney with EarthJustice, sees it differently ([link removed]) : "The fact that so many in the industry lined up against this shows how big an issue this was and that the ECMC staff completely caved."


** Quick hits
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Arizona Daily Star ([link removed])


** Quote of the day
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” I think at trial a group of citizens of West Texas will look and say, ‘Why aren’t you operators—who made billions of dollars extracting value from this land—owning up to your responsibility to take care of it?’”

—Daniel Charest, Burns Charest LLP, Inside Climate News ([link removed])


** Picture This
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@whitesandsnps ([link removed])
Porcupines?!?! In all this sand? Yes, we do have porcupines within the park. They are mainly active at night and rest during the day. Many nocturnal animals leave signs of their presence that can be seen during the day. Not only are footprints left behind, but the bite marks on our Rio Grande cottonwoods show us there have been prickly buddies around the night before. Porcupines like the nutritious inner bark of trees.

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