The Draco Oil & Gas Development Plan (OGDP) hearing has been rescheduled for March 13th, 2025. Extraction Oil & Gas submitted an updated 127 page prehearing statement, which we’ve analyzed below.
TL;DR (Too Long, Didn’t Read)
“Extraction believes that AL 4 and AL 4.1 are objectively infeasible alternatives to the Draco Pad,” citing 200+ homes within 2,000 ft, difficulties with rezoning to heavy industrial, an inability to procure an oil & gas permit from the Town of Erie, and uncertainty in negotiating with the Town Council. They propose moving forward with the original Draco Pad location just north of the Crestone Hub northwest of CR6 and CR7 just outside of Erie, Colorado.
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.
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?
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.
There are 79 existing wells within the CAP; 41 plugged and abandoned, 17 producing, 10 drilling, and 11 shut in or temporarily abandoned.
This map depicts the existing oil & gas infrastructure in and around the proposed Lowry Comprehensive Area Plan (CAP) near the Aurora Reservoir in Arapahoe County, Colorado.
Now that the Draco OGDP application has been deemed complete by the ECMC, the documents submitted with the application are available to view/download. Here, we’re taking an opportunity to analyze the submitted Form 2B Cumulative Impacts Data Identification Form and share some new information.
Extraction plans to spend 9 weeks constructing the location, 18 weeks to drill the wells, and 23 weeks to complete the wells for Draco, for a total of 50 weeks of pre-production activities, assuming two concurrent electric drilling rigs will be used. The wells will be in production for 20 years.
The operator estimates 158,125 diesel vehicle miles will be driven before the wells are put into production to deliver sand, pipe, and other materials to the site.
The project will use 3.27 million pounds of proppant/sand during completions activities.
They plan to use 12,885,000 barrels of water to frack the 26 wells at Draco, for a total of 541 million gallons of water and an average of 20.8 million gallons per well.
They will not be recycling produced water because “the infrastructure necessary to reuse or recycle water does not exist in this area.”
Extraction plans to plug and abandon 22 wells at 18 locations, as well as removing 24 oil tanks and 13 produced water tanks.
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.
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:
