In the light of recent speculation that Civitas is considering divestment of its Denver-Julesburg Basin assets to focus on the Permian basin in Texas, it’s a good time to review the major players in the basin. Let’s take a look at current assets, recent acquisitions, who’s in a position to acquire these assets, and how the acquisition might impact future development in the Basin.
Continue reading “Who’s Going to Buy the Civitas Assets?”ECMC Data Integrity: Erie Locations
Of the 344 locations identified by the Energy & Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) that are a part of the data falsification initially reported in November, 2024, 5 are in and around Erie, Colorado. Below are additional details about the spills and remediation efforts at these sites.

ECMC Data Falsification Map

This map shows oil & gas locations identified in data published by the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) on December 13, 2024 regarding at least 344 falsified laboratory data reports made to the ECMC since 2015 for spill remediation projects operated by Chevron (278 locations) and Oxy (66 locations), who contracted environmental testing by Eagle Environmental Consulting, Inc. and Tasman, Inc.
The ECMC is prioritizing investigation of the Closed locations within municipalities. Not shown are several sites in far northeast Weld County.
The map was compiled using GIS data downloaded from the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) web site at https://ecmc.state.co.us/ on December 13, 2024. Other geographic data sourced from OpenStreetMaps.
This map has been created for the Erie Protectors in partnership with EcoCarto, a local mapping consulting firm. Visit their online store to order a printed 24″ x 36″ poster of any of these maps, and please contact us if you would like to have us create a similar map for your area.
Data Sources
- Highways, major roads, local roads, water, and waterways from OpenStreetMap data for Colorado, courtesy of Geofabrik and the OpenStreetMap Foundation.
- Data falsification dataset from the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission (ECMC fka COGCC).
ECMC Data Integrity Preliminary Statistics
Today, we were finally given a list of the locations affected by the falsified laboratory data reports made to the ECMC. Here is a preliminary breakdown of how and where these affected locations are distributed.

ECMC Data Integrity Update Transcript
The following is a transcript of the virtual meeting held by the ECMC Commissioners on Friday, December 13 to address the falsified laboratory data reports made to the ECMC. Where appropriate, we have edited the transcript for clarity and brevity, and added emphasis to improve readability.
Julie Murphy: Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioners, and thanks to folks who are tuning in early this morning.
My name is Julie Murphy, and I’m the director of the Energy and Carbon Management Commission. I am, of course, disappointed by the circumstances that lead to today’s hearing, yet I’m grateful for the opportunity to share more information that members of the public, that each of you, that the press, and our local government partners have been curious about.
The purpose of the hearing is for me to provide an update about our ongoing investigation. I would remind us all this is an active ongoing investigation, and we are balancing transparency and accountability in our enforcement process.
Continue reading “ECMC Data Integrity Update Transcript”Can You Dig It? An Analysis of Soils Excavated From Spills
Someone recently asked, “How much of Erie’s soil has been and will be hauled away?” The short answer is 8,722 cubic yards of contaminated soils have been excavated from Erie since the ECMC started making this data available in 2014. This is equivalent to 632 dump truck loads, each carrying 14 cubic yards. Of these 18 spills, 16 reported an “unknown” volume of oil spilled, and 13 reported an “unkown” volume of condensate spilled.
Here’s the breakout for each year:
Year | Number of Spills | Total Soil Excavated (Cubic Yards) |
---|---|---|
2014 | – | – |
2015 | 1 | 1,200 |
2016 | 1 | 60 |
2017 | 3 | 4,413 |
2018 | – | – |
2019 | – | – |
2020 | 3 | 1,975 |
2021 | – | – |
2022 | 3 | 685 |
2023 | 5 | 350 |
2024 | 2 | 39 |
When we expand our search to the entire State of Colorado, there are 2,292 spills that required soil excavation, with an average of 165 cubic yards excavated for a total of
687,513 cubic yards excavated. The distribution of these data is shown in the chart below:

Interested in where these spills occur? See them visualized on the Weld County Oil Spills Map.
Extreme Reach Wellbores Require Extreme Water Use
Or, the march to the first billion gallon frac pad in Colorado

To understand the massive quantities of water that may be consumed to hydraulically fracture the 26 extreme reach wellbores at Draco, let’s look at the water used by the 394 hydraulic fracturing treatments logged thus far in 2024 to FracFocus, courtesy of the data wizards at Open FF who have made extensive inroads to sanitize and extend the FracFocus data.
Actual Water Use is Twice Estimated for Extreme Reach Wellbores

Let’s start with the upper extremes, as shown in the graph above. From the Cumulative Impacts analysis for the Blue Pad in Adams County, Crestone estimated they would consume between 102.9 and 147 million gallons of water to frac the 7 wells at Blue.
Crestone Peak Resources used a median of 47.7 million gallons of water per well and permanently poisoned 304 million gallons of water, more than twice their upper estimate!
Continue reading “Extreme Reach Wellbores Require Extreme Water Use”My, how you’ve grown! An investigation of wellbore lengths.
In the face of unprecedented 5 mile laterals proposed by Extraction for the Draco Pad, it’s an appropriate time to analyze the maximum measured depths as reported to the ECMC for wells in Colorado to answer the question, “Have 5 mile laterals ever been drilled in Colorado before?” Let’s not bury the lead; according to the data reported to the ECMC, the answer is a resounding NO!
The longest laterals we’ve ever seen in Colorado are 4 miles long; the vast majority are less than 3 miles. The 5 mile laterals proposed at Draco are 25% longer than the longest laterals ever drilled in Colorado, and the proposed wellbores are 70% longer than any wells completed before 2024.
Christiaan van Woudenberg, Erie Protectors
The Most Ever Oil & Gas Spills in Weld County. Again.
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."Weld County Hydraulic Fracturing Water Use Map

This map depicts the total amount of water used to hydraulically fracture the wells at oil & gas locations across Weld County, Colorado. While the American Petroleum Institute (API) says “the average fracking job uses roughly 4 million gallons of water per well,” recent proposed projects such as the Draco Oil & Gas Development Plan (OGDP) in Erie estimate they’ll use over 20 million gallons to frac each of the 26 well bores at the Draco pad.
Continue reading “Weld County Hydraulic Fracturing Water Use Map”