Erie resident Christiaan van Woudenberg stands near the site of the Draco Pad project on Aug. 9 in unincorporated Weld County. Photo by Cliff Grassmick/Daily Camera Staff Photographer
During a regularly scheduled meeting on Wednesday, March 26, 2025, the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) approved the Draco OGDP in a 4 to 1 vote, with Commissioner Messner the only no vote. Extraction had previously been directed to investigate Alternative Site 4 at the conclusion of a November 15, 2024 meeting; they deemed AL4 and an additional AL4.1 site unsuitable and proposed moving forward with the original Draco pad location.
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.
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?
Or, the march to the first billion gallon frac pad in Colorado
To understand the massive quantities of water that may be consumed to hydraulically fracture the 26 extreme reach wellbores at Draco, let’s look at the water used by the 394 hydraulic fracturing treatments logged thus far in 2024 to FracFocus, courtesy of the data wizards at Open FF who have made extensive inroads to sanitize and extend the FracFocus data.
Actual Water Use is Twice Estimated for Extreme Reach Wellbores
A detail view of the main graph below showing the hydraulic fracturing treatments at the Blue and Sky Ranch pads in Adams and Arapahoe Counties, respectively. The median wellbore length for these data is 5.43 miles, with a median 44.79 MM gallons of water consumed.
Let’s start with the upper extremes, as shown in the graph above. From the Cumulative Impacts analysis for the Blue Pad in Adams County, Crestone estimated they would consume between 102.9 and 147 million gallons of water to frac the 7 wells at Blue.
Crestone Peak Resources used a median of47.7 million gallons of water per well and permanently poisoned 304 million gallons of water, more than twice their upper estimate!
In the face of unprecedented 5 mile laterals proposed by Extraction for the Draco Pad, it’s an appropriate time to analyze the maximum measured depths as reported to the ECMC for wells in Colorado to answer the question, “Have 5 mile laterals ever been drilled in Colorado before?” Let’s not bury the lead; according to the data reported to the ECMC, the answer is a resounding NO!
The longest laterals we’ve ever seen in Colorado are 4 miles long; the vast majority are less than 3 miles. The 5 mile laterals proposed at Draco are 25% longer than the longest laterals ever drilled in Colorado, and the proposed wellbores are 70% longer than any wells completed before 2024.
Thank you for joining us at the Erie Community Library on June 12th from 5:00 to 7:00 for an information and question & answer session about the Draco Oil & Gas Development Plan (OGDP). We had over 50 people attend! Community activists, local elected officials, and other knowledgeable experts were on hand to answer your questions about this large-scale oil & gas development plan that affects neighborhoods in Erie, Colorado.
Watch the recording of the April 16, 2024 Erie Board of Trustees Draco Study Session on the Town of Erie’s web site. The Draco presentation begins at the 54 minute mark.
Well locations with potentially interfering wells in producing or shut-in state are identified in red circles with dotted red lines.
This map depicts the existing oil & gas infrastructure in and around the proposed drilling and spacing unit (DSU) for the Draco Oil and Gas Development Plan (OGPD). The well pad for the proposed 26 wells is several miles east of the DSU, just north of the Crestone Hub at CR 6 and CR 7 in unincorporated Weld County.
Since we’re under the threat of additional drilling at Coyote Trails, here’s a deeper look at the connection between the noise, odor, and other complaints made about the drilling and hydraulic fracturing/completion operations at the 27 wells of the Coyote Trails pad in 2018 and 2019.
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.
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.
