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”SB24-159 Media Coverage
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 |
Permitted vs Spud Wells by County
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”Spill Analysis by Year
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”Fracked vs Plugged Wells
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:
Coyote Trails Complaints
Since we’re under the threat of additional drilling at Coyote Trails, here’s a deeper look at the connection between the noise, odor, and other complaints made about the drilling and hydraulic fracturing/completion operations at the 27 wells of the Coyote Trails pad in 2018 and 2019.
Coyote Trails FAQ
tl;dr
Extraction Oil & Gas intends to drill an additional 18 wells at the Coyote Trails pad in unincorporated Weld County, just outside of Erie, Colorado. We are working diligently with other organizations, the Town of Erie, and the City and County of Broomfield to prevent this Application for Permit to Drill (APD) from being approved. Most recently, their APD was denied by the ECMC Commissioners in a 4 to 1 vote during a January 24th, 2024 commission hearing. The operator will most likely resubmit their application with additional information, the timing of which is unknown.
We’ll be updating this FAQ as we get additional information from the various involved parties. Where possible, links to additional/source material have been provided.
Continue reading “Coyote Trails FAQ”ECMC Complaints Analysis
As complicated and difficult as it can be to submit a complaint to the ECMC (fka COGCC) about an air quality, noise, or odor issue at an oil and gas facility in Colorado, the number of complaints lodged with any location is a good measure of the negative impact that oil & gas exploration has in our neighborhoods. With data obtained from the ECMC, here’s a data table showing the sites that logged more than 20 complaints of any kind since 2010.
ECMC Coyote Trails Form 2 Testimony
On Wednesday, January 24th, the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) made the unusual move of hearing an application to drill (APD) at the existing Coyote Trails facility in unincorporated Weld County, just northeast of the Vista Ridge development in Erie.
Below is the testimony given by Erie Protector’s Editor in Chief, Christiaan van Woudenberg.
Continue reading “ECMC Coyote Trails Form 2 Testimony”How much is 10 million gallons of water?
We’ve seen that modern hydraulic fracturing permanently poisons over 10 million gallons of water per well drilled — it’s a staggeringly large number that is hard to grasp. Here are some comparisons to give you a better idea of “how much” is in 10 million gallons of water.
Continue reading “How much is 10 million gallons of water?”