At least 404 falsified laboratory reports were made by Eagle Environmental Consulting, Inc. and Tasman, Inc. 55 additional falsified reports were discovered in April 2025, and another 5 were added in July 2025.
On June 3, 2026, the ECMC filed proposed orders assessing a combined $11.6 million in penalties against five operators (listed below) for their roles in the falsified spill remediation laboratory reports we first started covering in December 2024. On the surface, $11.6 million sounds like accountability. Look closer, and the picture is far grimmer.
Use the image slider to compare before vs after: An Erie resident filed a complaint with the ECMC about excessive weeds at KP Kauffman’s SRC Pratt #24-29D site just north of Vista Ridge on the Redtail Ranch Property on February 18th, 2026. By April 3rd, an ECMC inspector had verified that all the issues documented on a site visit on February 25th had been addressed.
Have you ever used the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission’s Complaint tool? It’s the primary mechanism for impacted residents to raise concerns about oil & gas operations in Colorado, but it’s a bit of a black hole — you rarely know what happens to your complaint after you submit it.
After the hearing was delayed a week by the Erie Town Council due to an administrative issue with publication of supporting documentation, the Redtail Ranch settlement agreement has been rescheduled for consideration at the Council’s December 16th meeting.
How Did We Get Here?
Drums full of contaminated soil from the north end of the Redtail Ranch property await transport and disposal to a Nebraska incineration facility, December 2017.
The original 2020 Redtail Ranch sketch plan adhered to an older 350 foot setback for oil & gas. In an attempt to appease a health/safety focused Town Council in 2024, Stratus proposed a modified plat that adhered to the Town’s current 500 foot setbacks. That application was rightfully denied for a failure to “promote the public health, safety, and general welfare” given the existing oil & gas wells onsite, as well as environmental concerns about contamination from IBM chemical waste dumped on the site in the late 1960s.
In response to public comment made during their October 29th meeting, Ellice Devine, ECMC UIC Program Coordinator gave an update on data issues discovered in produced water reporting.
In Summary:
Reporting inconsistencies discovered: While reviewing Form 7 produced water reports (required since September 2023), staff found operators reporting disposal at closed facilities, abandoned locations, spill/release IDs, and lease IDs, none of which are appropriate disposal locations.
Root cause identified: The errors appear most common among operators using commercial UIC facilities, likely because commercial operators reroute produced water based on logistics without communicating changes back to the producing operators.
No safety concerns: The misreported volumes represent “a minute fraction of total disposal volumes”, and this is “purely a data reporting problem”.
Corrective actions planned: ECMC will modify business rules to alert or prevent submission of incorrect facility IDs, update guidance documentation, contact operators to request corrections to existing data, and may pursue enforcement action for non-compliance.
Quality assurance success: Commissioner Messner praised this as an example of effective quality control for Colorado’s relatively new (less than 2 years old) and potentially nation-leading produced water reporting requirements.
Chair Robbins: This is the Energy and Carbon Management Commission. It is October 22nd, 2025. We are back in session. We’re going to take up docket 2301, an oil and gas development plan, the Washington OGDP. This one has an unusual procedural history. I think it was in September we heard the Washington OGDP and the commission voted at that time to stay further consideration of this matter. That was based upon the uncontroverted fact that there was a bald eagle nest within a distance that precluded the commission from being able to favorably vote on the OGDP.
Chair Robbins: My understanding from the record that I’ve read is that since that time and here in the recent weeks, the tree that contained the bald eagle nest lost not one, not two, but three limbs. And the third limb that was lost, it was blown down, contained the actual eagle’s nest. And my understanding is that if we were to speak with the CPW folks, they would confirm all of that and they would also confirm to us that there is no longer an objection from Colorado Parks and Wildlife relevant to the eagle’s nest and that it is no longer a factor for consideration by the commission in terms of looking at the OGDP in question. So the wildlife concern no longer exists. So with that I think the first order of action, and I’m looking to Attorney Boudreaux to maybe show up as well. Do I need to take any evidence on any of that or can that all just be sort of understood by commission as being true because then I’m going to take up the unopposed motion to vacate the stay.
Coiled tubing activities at the Bubba Federal 3N66W5 pad operated by PDC Energy in Weld County, May 2025. Chemical disclosures for this pad were made on June 6, 2025.
Now that the ECMC Chemical Disclosures “database” has data for 158 locations, let’s look at the chemicals disclosed. We previously looked at the chemical disclosure for the Cosslett East location, and found 4 chemicals (by CAS Number) that Crestone Peak Resources had never before listed in their FracFocus disclosures.
As of July 17, 2025, the ECMC Chemical Disclosures data contain 4,735 chemical entries for 158 locations and 172 distinct chemical CAS Numbers. These are the 28 chemicals that have never before been disclosed to FracFocus for any Colorado frac job, according to their CAS Number, as well as their general purpose in oil & gas extraction.
An aerial image of the Cosslett East facility (separators and other infrastructure), operated by Crestone Peak Resources.
On June 27, 2025, Crestone Peak Resources finally submitted the required chemical disclosures for the hydraulic fracturing jobs at Cosslett East, 5 weeks after PSR/FracTracker’s expose on missing chemical disclosures was published on May 20, 2025. This report was submitted 679 days late; it was originally due on August 18, 2024, 150 days after the last well was spud on March 21, 2023. It’s yet another example where the industry is only held accountable by activist organizations where state regulatory agencies fail to do so.
In a special meeting on June 26, 2025, ECMC representatives announced Notice of Alleged Violation (NOAV) 404256913, issued to Noble Energy Inc as a result of the Bishop A07 blowout incident on April 6, 2025. The NOAV is searchable via the ECMC’s COGIS Incident Inquiry database.
Additional documents regarding the Bishop well blowout are available at the spill and facility doc pages at the ECMC:
As per ECMC regulations, Noble Energy Inc will have an opportunity to respond to the NOAV. While not announced today, we hope the ECMC will announce a significant penalty for this record-breaking environmental disaster, as they did for the Firestone Tragedy.
On Tuesday, May 20, 2025, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), PSR Colorado, Colorado Sierra Club, and FracTracker Alliance released a report that highlighted low compliance with a 2022 Colorado law designed to prevent toxic exposure to the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing.
Of the 1,114 wells highlighted in the report, 14 of them are located in Erie at the Cosslett East #22H-H168 pad, where wells were drilled and hydraulically fractured in 2023.
