DENVER—State regulators are investigating four large releases from oil and gas waste pits, including mud left from drilling that is inside a frozen waterfall near Rifle.
The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission staff said Thursday that the drilling mud could flow into West Parachute Creek when the ice melts.
Regulators will work with the two companies involved to contain the waste and minimize the damage once the snow and ice melt.
“There is no immediate threat to wildlife or human health,” said Deb Frazier, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, which oversees the commission.
Frazier said the area is remote and closed to the public now.
The commission said the spills, from separate pits operated by two different companies, occurred from November through February and drained into a gulch west of the Roan Plateau. The area is in Garfield County, which the led Colorado last year in the number of natural gas drilling permits issued.
A record 6,368 permits were approved statewide.
One company immediately reported the release of about 30,000 barrels of mud left over from drilling, as the law requires.
Commission Interim Director Dave Neslin said the other operator also immediately reported a release, but failed to report two other incidents. The volumes of those releases aren’t known.
Neslin said the companies’ won’t be named until the investigation is completed. Until then, approval of 80 drilling permit applications in the gulch is on hold.
“Releases of drilling mud from pits are not uncommon,” Neslin said. “But releases of this magnitude in this kind of terrain and without notification are extremely rare.”
The pits hold water, mud and additives used in drilling. Neslin said the pits were lined, but the lining apparently failed.
The investigation into the releases shows that the existing oil and gas regulations work, said Meg Collins president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. The trade group has criticized preliminary proposals to revamp regulations, saying they will increase costs and bureaucracy and possibly drive companies out of the state.
“On behalf of the 70,000 Coloradans working in our industry throughout the state, we are steadfastly committed to keeping our worksites in a condition that meet and even exceed current regulations,” Collins said in a prepared statement.
An activist and western Colorado homebuilder said the spills highlight the need for careful regulation.
“Things are getting better in the gas patch, but only because people have been screaming and whining,” said Duke Cox, interim executive director of the conservation group Western Colorado Congress.
“The industry wants to make this all about taxes and money,” Cox said, “but we have to remember the reasons the rules were asked for, demanded, in fact, by the people of Colorado.”
The Legislature last year approved two new laws overhauling Colorado’s oil and gas industry. Some lawmakers grilled staffers about proposals, saying they will hurt the industry, which has generated thousands of jobs and billions of dollars for the state economy.
