GREELEY — The movement of large-scale oil and gas operations into Front Range suburbs is creating pressures not being addressed by state rules, Colorado’s top oil and gas regulator said Thursday.
In testimony to the governor’s oil and gas task force, Matt Lepore, executive director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, said development of shale oil has transformed the industry in the state.
Multiple wells are being drilled from large sites, and collection facilities are also bigger and moving closer to developed areas.
“This is the crux for me,” Lepore said. “Scale, proximity, intensity.”
One solution, Lepore said, is “some kind of comprehensive planning process that brings in industry, COGCC, local government and the community.”
The in August as part of a compromise with .
The 21-member task force has been meeting around the state. It will meet again Friday in Greeley then Feb. 2-3 and Feb. 23-24 at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. Its recommendations are due no later than Feb. 27.
In his recommendations, Lepore sketched a process under which a comprehensive plan would be required under certain “triggers,” such as locating in an “urban mitigation area” — where there are 22 homes or more or a high-occupancy building within 1,000 feet of a planned well site.
The goal, Lepore said, would be to “plan so those facilities can be farther from homes or not built at all.”
The process also could help promote pipelines to more remote areas, reducing the number of tanks near homes.
“Pipelines take planning,” Lepore said.
Under current regulations, once an oil and gas company has negotiated an agreement with a landowner to drill on a property, it files site plan and drilling permit applications with the state. If they meet state rules, the permit is issued.
Lepore suggested starting the process before the filing of the permit applications, so that local governments and residents can weigh in.
Dan Kelly, a task force member and a vice president for Noble Energy Inc., Colorado’s largest operator, asked Lepore how early the process would begin.
“We are only as good as our next year’s plan, our next year’s budget,” Kelly said.
Lepore said that the comprehensive planning would be triggered only when there was an actual drilling plan and the process could be somewhere between 90 and 180 days.
Will Toor, a task force member and a past Boulder County commissioner and Boulder mayor, asked, “What would the relationship be between state and local government?”
Lepore said the goal is to be “collaborative,” but in the end the state has the final say.
If there is a “it can’t go here, it has to go here” dispute, Lepore said, “It is my belief the state makes the final call.”
Mark Jaffe: 303-954-1912, mjaffe@denverpost.com or twitter.com/ByMarkJaffe
