Oil and Gas
Questions abound after oil company’s decision to shutter wells near site of Firestone home explosion
DENVER – Seven active oil and gas wells were shut down in the Firestone neighborhood where a house exploded during a water heater installation on April 17, killing two, state oil and gas officials said Thursday.
The information came as the head of Colorado’s oil and gas commission held a news conference Thursday morning to give more insight into the state’s involvement in the ongoing investigation into the explosion, that led one of the state’s top energy companies to shutter 3,000 wells on Wednesday. Continue reading
Fight over Thompson Divide oil and gas leases heats up with Pitkin Co. lawsuit
PITKIN COUNTY, Colo. – A fight over oil and gas leases in the Thompson Divide area continues to heat up, as Pitkin County and an environmental nonprofit filed suit Wednesday to be sure that a November decision by the feds to cancel 25 leases in the area is upheld under the Trump administration.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court of Colorado by the Pitkin Board of County Commissioners and Carbondale nonprofit Wilderness Workshop, claims that the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Department of the Interior broke their own rules when they extended oil and gas leases for Houston-based SG Interests in the years following 2013. Continue reading
Months after 2016 election, race for Colorado’s congressional districts in 2018 already heating up
DENVER – It’s been just over five months since the 2016 General Election, but two 2018 congressional races in Colorado are already heating up.
State Sen. Andy Kerr, a Democrat from Jefferson County, announced his bid for Colorado’s 7th Congressional District seat in an event a Dunstan Middle School in Lakewood – a school he attended years ago. Continue reading
Tipton, Lamborn and Gardner all hosting telephone town halls Wednesday evening
DENVER – Three of Colorado’s Republican members of Congress are holding telephone town hall meetings Wednesday evening to talk with constituents.
Sen. Cory Gardner is holding his fourth in a series of town halls Wednesday evening at 7:10 p.m. Mountain Time. He is holding several throughout the year at different times of the day in order to connect with different groups of people, he says.
You can sign up to participate in the Gardner town hall by clicking here. You must sign up at least an hour before the start time to be able to pose a question, but anyone can listen in.
In the March 1 town hall, Gardner talked about marijuana, health care, and Russia, among other subjects.
Rep. Doug Lamborn will also host one Wednesday. His begins at 6:30 p.m. Mountain Time. Sign up for the town hall by clicking here.
And Rep. Scott Tipton will hold a town hall starting at 5:30 p.m. Mountain Time Wednesday. The town hall was originally slated for Tuesday, but was pushed back to Wednesday because of flight delays, Tipton said.
You can sign up for Tipton’s town hall here.
Many of Colorado’s congressional delegation is holding town hall meetings over at least the next month in order to hear from constituents on topics concerning them.
Sign up for Denver7 email alerts to stay informed about breaking news and daily headlines.
Summitville Mine in southwestern Colorado gets $1M in Superfund grant money
DENVER – An old mining site in southwest Colorado has received $1 million in Superfund grant money from the Environmental Protection Agency to continue water treatment at the site.
The Summitville Mine, located in Rio Grande County, has been under the purview of the EPA and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment since 1992.
Mining at the site began with gold and silver mining around 1870. It continued for more than 100 years, when Summitville Consolidated Mining Corp., Inc. started large-scale open-pit mining operations using cyanide to retrieve the metals from the rock.
A leak in the pad used to leach out the precious metals was discovered in 1986. The company abandoned the site shortly thereafter and filed for bankruptcy at the end of 1992, when the EPA took the site over for cleanup operations.
Over the next two decades, the EPA and state worked extensively to contain the leak and start rehabilitating nearby land and waterways, including the Alamosa River and Wightman Fork.
Construction on a hydroelectric power system at the site got underway in 2008, and $17 million in American Reinvestment and Recovery Act funds received in 2009 helped the completion of the water treatment plant at the site.
The $1 million in new Superfund grant money will go toward continuing water treatment at the site.
The site is one of 24 EPA Superfund sites in Colorado.
Sign up for Denver7 email alerts to stay informed about breaking news and daily headlines.
Colorado Attorney General sues Boulder County over oil and gas moratorium
BOULDER, Colo. – The Colorado Attorney General’s Office sued Boulder County and its board of commissioners Tuesday after weeks of threatening to do so if the county did not repeal a moratorium on oil and gas drilling in unincorporated parts of the county.
Attorney General Cynthia Coffman and the state of Colorado are plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which Coffman had threatened since last month if the county didn’t repeal its moratorium by Feb. 10.
Boulder County put the moratorium in place in 2012 and has extended it eight times, most recently in December, when county commissioners voted to extend it to May 1.
But the suit filed Tuesday points to a 2015 Colorado Supreme Court case that went against Fort Collins’ moratorium on fracking and a Longmont moratorium, and said that local governments cannot regulate the oil and gas industry.
The 2015 case’s ruling said that the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Act gives the state sole power to regulate oil and gas development and operations within the state.
In both rulings, the court said that even temporary moratoriums, which Boulder has argued its is, “deleteriously affects what is intended to be a state-wide program of regulation.”
In Tuesday’s filing, Coffman and the state ask for the court to declare that Boulder County’s moratorium is pre-empted by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Act, and also for it to put in place a permanent injunction that would keep the county and board from enforcing the moratorium. Coffman and the state also ask for court costs and other relief justifiable by the court.
Boulder County and state officials responded swiftly Tuesday afternoon.
“The Colorado Attorney General sent a special valentine to the oil and gas industry today against Boulder County for our working to safeguard our community from the industrial impacts of oil and gas development,” a news release from the county said.
But it maintains, as it did when Coffman first threatened to sue, that its moratorium is “of a materially shorter duration and is consistent with Colorado law.”
The county said its board of commissioners will meet as planned on March 14 and March 23 to review the county’s new oil and gas regulations for unincorporated parts of the county.
“It’s our right and our responsibility to protect our residents and to protect our world-class environment from the impact of oil and gas development, which is very industrial…” said Commissioner Elise Jones.
Five Democrats who represent areas of Boulder County in the state House lambasted Coffman’s suit, saying she was suing on the behalf of a private industry.
“The Attorney General has decided to wield the power of her office for the benefit of private companies at the expense of local communities,” said Majority Leader KC Becker, D-Boulder.
But Colorado Oil and Gas Association President and CEO Dan Haley told Denver7 that Boulder’s five-year old moratorium is illegal.
“We support the Attorney General’s decision,” he said. “For us, it’s very clear. It’s about the law. It’s not about fracking, It’s not about drilling. It’s not about pipelines. It’s about whether, or not, we have a rule of law in Colorado.”
Rep. Jared Polis, the Democrat who represents the 2nd Congressional District and is the Vice Chair of the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, slammed Coffman’s lawsuit Tuesday.
“We should all be outraged that the Colorado attorney general has chosen to use public tax dollars to bully Boulder County on behalf of the oil and gas industry,” Polis said in a statement. “The oil and gas industry is more than equipped to bring their own lawsuits, and I suspect they have opted not to sue Boulder County because they know Colorado law allows for a short term fracking moratorium. What the attorney general has done today is a purely political waste of money, and it is not legally sound.”
State Sen. Matt Jones, D-Louisville, also criticized Coffman’s perceived ties with the oil and gas industry in a statement.
“This is disgraceful. After seeing the Attorney General’s and Oil and Gas industry’s press releases about the lawsuit sent out almost at the same time, I think it’s safe to assume the Attorney General is using the powers of her office and using tax dollars to intimidate and sue taxpayers at the behest of special interest industries,” he said. “The question I have for the Attorney General is this: how many oil and gas corporations did she consult with before sending out her threat letter to Boulder County on January 26?”
Sign up for Denver7 email alerts to stay informed about breaking news and daily headlines.
Voters pass Amendment 71, which will alter the process for changing Colorado’s constitution
DENVER – Colorado voters on Tuesday passed an amendment that will require any proposed amendment to the state constitution be signed off on by voters in each of the state’s 35 Senate districts.
The measure, Amendment 71, passed with 57 percent approval as of 12:22 a.m. Wednesday, when 73 percent of state votes had been reported.
Instead of being able to collect the required number of signatures from anywhere in the state, proponents of a measure to add a constitutional amendment will have to get signatures from at least 2 percent of the total number of registered voters in each of Colorado’s 35 Senate districts.
For instance, District 35 is comprised of 16 counties in southeastern Colorado and has 88,962 registered voters. Under an approved Amendment 71, 1,779 signatures would have to be gathered on a ballot drive and approved for the measure to go on November’s ballot.
The amendment won’t change the process for drives to change state statutes, only the constitution.
Currently, any constitutional amendment approved by 50 percent, plus one vote, of voters in an election will become law.
But now that Amendment 71 has been approved, that threshold will be raised to require any constitutional amendment be approved by 55 percent of voters.
That change wouldn’t apply to the repeal of an amendment – only to changes to the constitution. In the case of a repeal, a simple majority vote would remain the threshold for approval.
Read more about the measure here.
Sign up for Denver7 email alerts to stay informed about breaking news and daily headlines.