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.
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:
This chart shows the distribution of number of cubic yards of soil excavated for the 2,292 spills reported to the ECMC where some volume of soil was excavated.
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.
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.
Spills with known quantities of oil, produced water, condensate, etc. spilled are colored by volume spilled in “blue barrels” (BBLs), with oil spills over 200 BBLs shown with callouts. Spills with unknown or zero quantities of oil are shown as pink diamonds.
This map depicts spills reported to the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) by the volume of oil, produced water, condensate, and other fluids spilled at oil & gas locations in Weld County, Colorado. Top spills with more than 200 “blue barrels” (BBLs) of oil spilled have been called out on the map. Also shown are the quantities of contaminated soil and water removed as a part of spill remediation efforts; see the legend below for details.
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.
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.
The original Spill Analysis by Year chart available at https://ecmc.state.co.us/data2.html#/downloads
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?
