Defining a large oil and gas facility is a crucial but difficult step ahead of state regulators as they head into a new rulemaking process.
The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission made a stop in Durango on Thursday as part of a statewide tour looking to gain feedback on the upcoming rulemaking process. The meeting with local municipal and county officials was considered a preliminary step before a stakeholder process in September that leads to rulemaking in November and December.
The oil-and-gas commission is charged with implementing two new rules after meetings last year by a task force convened by the governor to weigh any additional rules and regulations needed. The task force was assembled as a compromise to avoid ballot questions that sought to offer local control in an effort to ban hydraulic fracturing. The task force advanced nine recommendations, but only two fall in the hands of state regulators to craft rules.
The first recommendation being considered for rulemaking by the oil-and-gas commission aims at addressing operations in locations near densely populated areas. It would drive local government participation during the permitting process for large facilities.
Matt Lepore, Oil and Gas Conservation Commission director, said some have been pushing to broadly define a large-scale facility as anything that impacts a community. But he cautioned against that approach.
“That’s a hard way to write a rule,” Lepore said at the meeting. “I can’t write a rule just based on subjective perception of impacts.”
Todd Weaver, a La Plata County attorney, worries that it will be difficult to define a large facility given the diversity of Colorado’s communities. What is a large facility in Weld County might not look the same in La Plata County. That gets even more complicated when compared to population-heavy areas along the Front Range.
“I’m curious about the thought process ... when it comes to really focusing on what appears to me as how many wells or how long it takes to drill or how long it takes to frack it. That seems to be the direction it’s going, and I would like to see a discussion on a broader definition,” Weaver said.
Meanwhile, La Plata County commissioners are concerned that counties have been left out of the second rule being considered by the oil-and-gas commission. The proposal calls for operators to register with municipalities but leaves out counties. That was a controversial recommendation issued by the task force, pushed by representatives of industry-heavy parts of the state who believe that the current state of the industry is acceptable on a county level.
What perplexes La Plata commissioners is that they are the ones who truly need to have input, since municipalities, such as Durango, have very few operations to oversee.
“I can give you a host of regulations that were well-intended but have had the opposite effects, and that’s why it’s important for counties to have a say,” said La Plata County Commissioner Brad Blake, a Republican.
Gwen Lachelt, a Democratic La Plata County commissioner who was co-chairwoman of the oil-and-gas task force, was irked by the fact that her task force advanced the recommendation without including counties.
“Counties should absolutely be included in that rule,” Lachelt said. “I know there was a specific reason why ... that recommendation limited it to municipalities, but we do believe it needs to be expanded, or we’re not in.”
pmarcus@durangoherald.com
