The Colorado Oil and Gas Commission is proposing new basic operating rules for the energy industry as part of its comprehensive plan to add health and environment components to the permit process.
The mandate to consider health and wildlife protection issues came from the legislature — but it doesn’t include the operating issues under consideration, such as requiring pit liners and raising reclamation bonds, say industry officials.
The proposal, for example, would double the bonds to $10,000 per well to ensure that wells drilled to 3,000 feet are plugged. Bonds for wells deeper than 3,000 feet would quadruple to $20,000 a well.
All pits would be required to be lined, unless the operator can show seepage wouldn’t reach aquifers.
“This is a separate issue and should not be tacked on to meeting House Bill 1298 and House Bill 1341,” said Meg Collins, president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, an industry trade group, referring to last year’s legislation that brought the state Division of Wildlife and the Department of Public Health and Environment into the permitting process.
State officials say that all the issues are connected.
“It has been more than 10 years since the regulations were updated,” Dave Neslin, the commission’s acting director, told a Club 20 meeting in Denver Friday. Club 20 is a Western Slope county lobbying group.
“We want to ensure we are protecting wildlife, the environment and people’s lives,” Neslin said.
New rules would also be added requiring energy-production sites to file inventories of the chemicals being used at the site.
The main focus of the rules, however, is a broader planning process to evaluate energy development using comprehensive development plans and geographic area plans.
The goal, Neslin said, is to look at the “additive, cumulative effects” of drilling and production plans.
The oil and gas commission says it expects to adopt final rules by July.
