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.
After 8 hours of testimony and deliberations over two days last week, the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) voted unanimously on Friday to indefinitely stay a decision on the Draco Oil & Gas Development Plan (OGDP) in unincorporated Weld County, less than 500 feet outside of the Town of Erie.
The proposed Draco wellbores extend over 5 miles west through Erie and into Boulder County, and will hydraulically fracture and extract minerals underneath 4,500 homes. These wellbores also threaten 72 existing wells in the drilling & spacing unit (DSU) and many more nearby, prompting concern, outrage, and action from local residents. The Draco stay decision is cause to celebrate … right? Right?
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.
This maps shows the volume of water in millions of gallons used to hydraulically fracture the wells at locations in Weld County.
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.
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.
Colorado House District 19 is inundated with oil & gas infrastructure; shown here are the hundreds of wells and directional lines that cross the district.
This map depicts the existing and planned oil & gas infrastructure within and surrounding Colorado House District 19.
It was compiled using GIS data downloaded from the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) web site at https://ecmc.state.co.us/ on June 11, 2024.
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.
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.
