Below is a transcript of Commissioner Oeth’s testimony during the March 26, 2025 deliberations on the Draco Oil & Gas Development Plan (OGDP). Please excuse any transcription errors.
Commissioner Oeth: This is a really tough one, and I really appreciate my fellow Commissioners Cross and Messner starting us out and really doing a very thorough job of laying out so many of the complicated factors and considerations on all sides of this. This really does highlight the really challenging nature of this application—both the things that are really positive about it and those that are potentially concerning about it, and all those things that we have to take into consideration. So thank you for that.
Because of that, I believe I can be quite brief, but I do also want to take another opportunity to thank all the members of the public that have been engaged in and throughout this process and all of their thoughtful comments. It is much appreciated, as well as the additional work and meetings that have occurred between the applicant and the town of Erie, and as well as CDPHE’s continued evaluation of the site, even if it’s through their own process, helping us understand what that means in terms of the implications through our process. So I really appreciate all of that.
You know, where I came down at the last hearing really was feeling that there were a lot of elements of the application that were very strong in terms of minimizing and mitigating the potential risks from the proposed development, but did not feel that the applicant had sufficiently demonstrated that they had first avoided all potential impacts.
Given the additional work that has been done since that time, I am now convinced that the applicant has met their burden to first show that they have avoided the potential impacts, and I do feel that the additional measures to minimize and mitigate those potential impacts are appropriate and address those concerns.
I do think that the timing of development is very critical given the future development. I was going to say potential future development, but I appreciate your comments, Commissioner Messner, that it’s not really potential—that development is going to occur. So the timing of the development of this site is really important in light of the timing of the residential development.
Commissioner Cross, I didn’t catch—and I might have missed it in your comments—given the kind of discrepancy between the town of Erie’s suggested timing of October of 2027 and the applicant’s of really more May 2028, I didn’t hear what your thoughts are with respect to that. I would be very interested in that.
Because when I think about these future homes, I agree it’s very appropriate to take that into consideration in light of the 2,000-foot setback and those future homes being within that setback. I think it’s important—we’ve always known that just being within that 2,000-foot setback doesn’t mean that there’s no risks, it just means that there’s significantly less risks.
There are additional ongoing studies that have been brought to our attention with respect to that, and I appreciate that. In this context, I would consider those future homeowners to be in a situation of—in the event that they move into those homes—being in a situation as if they had provided informed consent. So that’s kind of how I’m thinking about that.
But again, I really think that that timing aspect is very important, so would like to circle back to that. But I do feel that the applicant has now met their burden to demonstrate that they have met all elements of the mitigation hierarchy.