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.
The proposed site is surrounded by the Denver Regional Landfill to the north and the Front Range Landfill to the east. As of June 13, 2024, the site is host to 22 producing wells, 7 shut in wells, and 2 plugged and abandoned wells. All 29 of the active wells on the site will have to be plugged and abandoned in the future.
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.
The Town of Erie has logged the most complaints to the ECMC of any municipality in Colorado, as shown on this map of oil & gas infrastructure and complaints. Data from the ECMC.
This map depicts the existing oil & gas infrastructure in and around the Town of Erie, just north of Denver, Colorado. Erie is on the front lines of the battle between responsible residential development and oil & gas exploration of the Denver-Julesburg basin. During drilling and completions operations at the Waste Connections and Pratt sites just north of the Vista Ridge development in Erie, almost 1,000 complaints were logged for noise and odor issues.
The data was compiled using GIS data downloaded from the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) web site at https://ecmc.state.co.us/ on July 2, 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.
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.
