Protecting Erie: By residents, for residents.
It just keeps getting worse. A record in January. A record in May. And another record in June — 151 oil & gas spills reported in Weld County, representing 85.3% of the 177 total spills reported for the month of June in Colorado.
See these spills on a map of Weld County.
Continue reading "The Most Ever Oil & Gas Spills in Weld County. Again."We previously wrote about a record number of oil & gas spills in Weld County for January 2024, and have a disappointing update … a record 132 spills were reported for May 2024, the most ever, representing 87% of all the spills reported for the month in Colorado.
See these spills on a map of Weld County.
Continue reading "Another Record Number of Spills in Weld County"Now that the Draco OGDP application has been deemed complete by the ECMC, the documents submitted with the application are available to view/download. Here, we’re taking an opportunity to analyze the submitted Form 2B Cumulative Impacts Data Identification Form and share some new information.
Thank you for joining us at the Erie Community Library on June 12th from 5:00 to 7:00 for an information and question & answer session about the Draco Oil & Gas Development Plan (OGDP). We had over 50 people attend! Community activists, local elected officials, and other knowledgeable experts were on hand to answer your questions about this large-scale oil & gas development plan that affects neighborhoods in Erie, Colorado.
The following climate-related bills have been introduced in the Colorado Legislature for the Spring 2024 term:
For the month of January 2024 in Weld County, the ECMC recorded the largest number of oil & gas spills ever; 102 spills altogether. This represents 77.3% of the 132 spills reported for the month across the entire state.
Continue reading “A Record Number of Spills in Weld County”We’ll update this post with additional media coverage as we find it. If you come across something we’ve missed, let us know.
| Published | Source | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Mar 13, 24 | Colorado Newsline | How a pair of scissors helps explain the deepest divide in Colorado climate policy |
| Mar 1, 24 | Colorado Newsline | Colorado climate activists rally at Capitol to support oil and gas phaseout bill |
| Feb 16, 24 | The Center Square | Bill would stop new oil, gas permits in Colorado by 2030 |
| Feb 14, 2024 | CPR News | Colorado is set to consider a ‘fossil fuel phase-out.’ Here’s why that’s a big deal |
| Feb 14, 2024 | The Fence Post | Colorado oil and gas ban bill introduced by Jaquez Lewis, Priola |
| Feb 12, 2024 | The Denver Gazette | Colorado Democrats push to end new oil drilling by 2030 |
| Feb 10, 2024 | Denver Business Journal | Colorado legislators push to end oil well drilling by 2030 (Paywalled) |
| Feb 10, 2024 | The Sum & Substance | Coming bills would ban new oil-and-gas wells, stop summertime drilling |
Now that the “SB24-159 Modifications to Energy & Carbon Management Processes” bill has been introduced in the legislature and is getting some media attention, industry advocates once again say that activists are trying to ban fossil fuel extraction today, right now, no exceptions. In reality, the legislation is meant to slow down and eventually stop the permitting process. Even this will take quite a bit of time.
The Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) makes available a daily data download for the visualizations available on the Daily Activity Dashboard. One of the sheets available in the Excel workbook is Spud Data, showing two interesting statistics for each county in Colorado:
Continue reading “Permitted vs Spud Wells by County”In addition to persistently-poor air quality, the immense amount of oil & gas infrastructure present throughout Colorado poses another risk in the form of spills—of oil, methane, and produced water. While the amount of “spilled” methane gas is more difficult to quantify, the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) has done a better job of capturing the quantities of oil and produced water spilled at oil & gas facilities in Colorado. This data is available to download from the ECMC web site, but is poorly presented as a data table PDF that cannot be machine read into Microsoft Excel or other tools for easy analysis.
Can you spot the “analysis?” The amount of oil and water spilled has been expressed as a percent of the total volume of oil and water produced, respectively. At best, it seems that the volume of oil spilled has declined relative to production, but the number of spills have quadrupled over the reporting period! What’s happening?
Continue reading “Spill Analysis by Year”If you look through the various views of the ECMC Daily Activity Dashboard, you’ll see a view that shows the number of plugged wells by county and municipality over time, but it’s difficult to understand the trends. Are more wells being plugged and abandoned lately, or less? How can I compare this data year over year? To that end, we’ve prepared this visualization:
