Category: Vista Ridge

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Opening Pandora’s Box: The Draco Debacle

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?

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Coyote Trails FAQ

An aerial image of the Coyote Trails drilling pad, from a Channel 7 News article.
An aerial image of the Coyote Trails drilling pad, from a 2018 Denver Channel 7 News article.

tl;dr
Extraction Oil & Gas intends to drill an additional 18 wells at the Coyote Trails pad in unincorporated Weld County, just outside of Erie, Colorado. We are working diligently with other organizations, the Town of Erie, and the City and County of Broomfield to prevent this Application for Permit to Drill (APD) from being approved. Most recently, their APD was denied by the ECMC Commissioners in a 4 to 1 vote during a January 24th, 2024 commission hearing. The operator will most likely resubmit their application with additional information, the timing of which is unknown.

We’ll be updating this FAQ as we get additional information from the various involved parties. Where possible, links to additional/source material have been provided.

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ECMC Complaints Analysis

As complicated and difficult as it can be to submit a complaint to the ECMC (fka COGCC) about an air quality, noise, or odor issue at an oil and gas facility in Colorado, the number of complaints lodged with any location is a good measure of the negative impact that oil & gas exploration has in our neighborhoods. With data obtained from the ECMC, here’s a data table showing the sites that logged more than 20 complaints of any kind since 2010.

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ECMC Coyote Trails Form 2 Testimony

On Wednesday, January 24th, the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) made the unusual move of hearing an application to drill (APD) at the existing Coyote Trails facility in unincorporated Weld County, just northeast of the Vista Ridge development in Erie.

Below is the testimony given by Erie Protector’s Editor in Chief, Christiaan van Woudenberg.

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How much water does fracking use, Part III

In Part I and Part II, we showed that each hydraulic fractured well permanently poisons millions of gallons of water. This week a new Duke University study was released, claiming “the amount of water used per well for hydraulic fracturing surged by up to 770 percent between 2011 and 2016 in all major U.S. shale gas and oil production regions.”

Since it has been a while since we’ve gathered this data from FracFocus, a quick calculation shows Extraction Oil & Gas has used 102,044,434 gallons of water to frack the 10 wells at the Coyote Trails pad just east of Erie, Colorado in unincorporated Weld County.

Extraction Oil & Gas used 102,044,434 gallons of water to frack the 10 wells at Coyote Trails.

Once again, let’s say it out loud:

Extraction Oil & Gas has used one hundred two million, forty-four thousand, four hundred and thirty four gallons of water to frack the ten wells at Coyote Trails.

Keep in mind that these 10 wells are just the beginning; 4 Form 2s have already been approved and another 24 are pending for this location.

See also:

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How much water does fracking use?

Recently, we stumbled upon FracFocus, an additional resource linked from the COGCC complaint site. FracFocus allows the public to view “Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Product Component Information Disclosure” documents that include some summary information for each well, as well as a detailed chemical composition of the fluids injected at each well head. We ran the numbers for Waste Connections and Pratt, and came up with a single catastrophic statistic: 160,349,639 gallons of water.

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Erie neighbors concerned about new gas pipeline close to homes

Once again, Jennifer Kovaleski from 7News is in Vista Ridge to talk about fracking. This time, it’s the raw natural gas gathering lines being installed within 100 ft of existing homes by Anadarko Petroleum. Once they start building units in the Red Tail Ranch development, homes will be even closer to this line.

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Erie neighbors host demonstration in front of nearby fracking site

The Erie Protectors hosted a community photo shoot to replicate a photo taken by concerned community members in December 2014 to protest Crestone Peak Resources’ activities at the Waste Connections and Pratt sites just north of Vista Ridge in Erie, Colorado. We had a wonderful morning meeting like-minded neighbors opposed to oil & gas activities in our neighborhoods.

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