The gas industry won
the battle of the stickers that festooned people’s ball caps,
chests and arms. Some 2,000 folks had gathered in Grand Junction to
tell the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission their
feelings about proposed new rules for oil and gas drilling in
Colorado. It was easy to see that “Please don’t rule us
out” outnumbered “Clean air, clean water, common
sense,” the sticker handed out by conservationists.
But that was merely a warm-up to the final decisions the commission
will make later this summer.
There will certainly be a
few changes from the rules as proposed; that’s the whole
point of listening to the public. No one disputes that the energy
industry is an important piece of Colorado’s economy. The
issue is not whether energy development will continue; it’s
what sort of balance will protect the rest of our economy in
western Colorado and the rest of the state. That other 70 percent
includes agriculture, recreation and tourism, and they all are
likely to be impacted by energy development if appropriate rules
are not enforced.
The threat of job loss and industry
retrenchment was frequently repeated at the June 10 hearing.
It’s an emotional subject, but emotion doesn’t always
track facts. Evidence of that was contained in a news story that
quoted e-mails circulating from industry workers falsely claiming
that five busloads of Greenpeace demonstrators were headed for the
hearing. Another rumor, later denied by the company, was that
Williams employees “all will be looking for jobs in three or
four months.”
That’s hardly likely.
Independent research by Canada’s Fraser Institute, released
last December, lists Colorado as the most industry-friendly place
in the United States for energy development. In fact, it’s
one of the top five spots in the world. The other four are all
overseas, most of them Third World countries.
Drilling
permits are being issued at a record pace again this year. Yet
despite all its big trucks and heavy equipment, for the past
several years the industry has drilled only about a third of the
more than 6,000 permits it’s received.
Does that
sound like a lack of opportunity?
Regulatory updates are
not peculiar to Colorado. There’ve been recent overhauls in
Wyoming, Montana and New Mexico, including new rules regarding
lining waste pits in New Mexico that surpass those proposed for
Colorado.
Other issues need to be addressed in the
rule-making. One is well-setbacks from residences. Consider that a
150-foot distance separating your home from a well would be about
the equivalent to two residential lots in a subdivision. A 500-foot
setback would be about half a block. How close would you want to
live to a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week industrial activity during the
drilling phase? The regulatory answer here should be either larger
setbacks or else letting the concerns of landowners and neighbors
be heard in the permitting process.
Bonding requirements,
which are not a fee but temporary insurance against long-term
damages, are lower in the proposed new oil and gas rules than the
impact fees enacted recently by Rio Blanco County. When you
consider that an operator of up to 100 multiple wells can bond each
of them for about $300, that’s hardly enough to cover cleanup
or reclamation.
What about this fear of loss of jobs and
an economic downturn caused by the new rules? In one sense, a
decline is already occurring. From 2006 to 2007, according to the
Colorado Geological Survey, the value of natural gas production in
Colorado declined by 24 percent. This was not because of regulation
or taxes, but because of depressed prices as production outstripped
the ability to get that gas to market.
But that’s
changing rapidly. Colorado Oil and Gas Association representative
Kathy Hall says that every day, 1.8 billion cubic-feet of natural
gas gets shipped to the Midwest via the recently completed Rocky
Mountain Express pipeline. That’s just one of several recent
multimillion dollar expansions of outgoing pipeline capacity.
Feeding that beast will keep the industry active for many years,
whatever regulatory scheme evolves.
It’s too bad
emotion so easily overcomes reason, making it easy to imagine
scenarios that don’t take into account everyone’s
needs. Let’s hope the new regulatory decisions are based on
facts and science and — most of all — a sense of what’s
best for all the citizens of Colorado.
Jim
Spehar is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of
High Country News (hcn.org). He is a native of
Grand Junction, former mayor and councilman of the city, and he
remembers shoveling uranium mill tailings around his family’s
Main Street home.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
