Chevron, the country’s second-largest oil and gas company, plans to build a new fracking site in unincorporated Adams County that would be near neighborhoods that already are disproportionately impacted by pollution.
No permit applications for the site have been filed yet with Adams County or the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission. But Chevron has indicated it wants to build the Cord Federal oil and gas development near U.S. 85 and East 136th Avenue, north of Commerce City.
The development would have 40 wells on 22.8 acres but would not have storage tanks for crude oil or water, said Greg Dean, administrator.
The crude oil, gas and produced water would be piped away from the site.
Patty Errico, a Chevron spokesperson, said the design plan includes a reduced site footprint that’s smaller than ones used for legacy sites.“The proposed design includes several mitigation features, including an electric drilling rig, quiet frac fleet, sound walls and tankless facilities with oil, gas and water piped to and from the pad,” Errico wrote in an email to The Denver Post. “Chevron will conduct pre-operations baseline air monitoring and continue air monitoring through construction, drilling, completions and through early production.”
Chevron, which is filing the plan through its subsidiary PDC Energy, will host an open house meeting about its proposal from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday at Bison Ridge Recreation Center, 13905 E. 112th Ave. in Commerce City. Chevron representatives plan to attend to explain their proposal and answer questions about the plans. Childcare and refreshments will be provided.
The meeting is required by Adams County on all potential oil and gas developments. The Energy and Carbon Management Commission, known as the ECMC, also requires pre-application community meetings if the applicant plans to locate a development in . That means large shares of residents are of various ethnicities, make lower incomes or have lower education levels.
Although the development is in the early planning stage, it has already alarmed people who live in Commerce City and Brighton.
Adams County has approved three oil and gas development permits in the past year, and the plan proposed by Chevron would be larger than those, Dean said. Chevron’s plan would also need approval from the county commission as well as the ECMC.
The state requires all oil and gas wells to be at least 2,000 feet away from neighborhoods. Seven homes are within 2,000 feet of a well, Dean said.
Henderson Elementary School is 1 mile from the proposed well site, and Prairie View middle and high schools are 1.5 miles away, according to maps that have been presented to Adams County. Elmwood Baptist Church and Academy also are within a mile of the proposed site.Traffic from the site would exit on 136th and travel to U.S. 85.
Christiaan van Wouldenberg, a consultant for , an anti-fracking advocacy group, said his biggest concern was how the fracking project would impact people who already suffer more from pollution than those who live in wealthier parts of Colorado.
“They’re proposing a massive pad in a community that is already overburdened,” van Wouldenberg said. “Is this an overt case of environmental racism? I can’t say that right now, but they’re proposing a fracking pad in a community that is mostly black and brown people.”
People who live in those communities worry about the cumulative impacts of nearby sources of air and water pollution. Last month, the ECME released a report on its review of three health studies that associated oil and gas drilling with childhood leukemia and found acute health risks during the pre-production phase of a drilling pad.
, a Commerce City council member, said she worried about any fracking that might run underneath the city of about 74,000 people. The Derby Fault is beneath the city, and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, a former chemical weapons depot that’s now a national wildlife refuge, caused multiple earthquakes in the 1960s after its leaders drilled a 2-mile-deep disposal well at the site.
“My concern is that fault could be disrupted again,” Noble said. “It presents risks that other areas in the Front Range don’t have.”
Chevron was fined $1.53 million in March for a well blowout in Galeton in Weld County that spewed pollutants over homes and a school for about five days in April 2025.
If a similar blowout happened at the proposed well site, it would be closer to more people and major traffic arteries such as U.S. 85 and E-470, van Wouldenberg said.
“So if that were to occur, you’d have an economic and environmental disaster on your hands,” he said.
