Fossil fuel extraction infrastructure is pictured northeast of Longmont, Colo., on June 24, 2020. (Andy Bosselman for Colorado Newsline)
Colorado oil and gas regulators have given final approval to a new rule requiring drillers to better analyze the combined environmental effects of their operations, but activists say the move is the latest example of the state failing to live up to the goals of a 2019 health and safety law.
Members of the Energy and Carbon Management Commission voted unanimously on Tuesday to adopt the agency’s “Cumulative Impacts and Enhanced Systems and Practices Rules,” which will bolster permitting requirements for oil and gas drilling projects near certain Colorado communities deemed “disproportionately impacted” by pollution.
In a statement, Gov. Jared Polis said the move “builds on our country’s strongest oil and gas standards” and “sets a new and higher standard for evaluating and addressing the cumulative impacts of oil and gas operations.”
ECMC Chair Jeff Robbins praised the “extensive stakeholdering” that informed the adopted rule.
“I am grateful to the many individuals and groups who shared their perspectives, experiences, and expertise,” Robbins said in an agency press release. “The result of this collaboration is clear. We’ve adopted strong protections to ensure cumulative impacts from oil and gas operations are addressed as part of our protective regulatory protocol.”
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The rule’s adoption follows years of pressure from environmental groups and Democratic lawmakers who want the ECMC to do more to address cumulative impacts, as required by Senate Bill 19-181, the landmark package of health and safety reforms passed by the Legislature five years ago. Those groups said Tuesday that the commission’s new rule “falls short” of protecting communities impacted by extensive oil and gas development.
“The commission’s job was to enact rules to first evaluate and then address the cumulative impacts of oil and gas operations on public health and the environment, and realistically it left both runners on base,” Tarn Udall, senior attorney at Western Resource Advocates, said in a statement. “The rules default to only examining impacts within a narrow and arbitrary radius and don’t require the commission to take any substantive action to protect wildlife or water from ongoing and mounting harm.”
Industry groups, meanwhile, argued that the rulemaking was hardly necessary in the first place. In a statement, Kait Schwartz, director of the American Petroleum Institute’s Colorado branch, said Colorado oil and gas drillers “have spent the past half-decade in constant rulemakings as state lawmakers have repeatedly moved the goalposts on our regulatory regime.”
Under the rule, which will take effect Jan. 1, 2025, oil and gas operators seeking drilling permits in certain areas will be required to better analyze cumulative impacts and follow more rigorous community outreach protocols. But the ECMC balked at demands from environmental and community groups for measures like stricter enforcement of the agency’s 2,000-foot setback requirement between drilling sites and occupied buildings, and in August it watered down its proposal in response to industry pressure.
It’s the latest disappointment this year for activists critical of the state’s oil and gas industry, following the ECMC’s August approval of a sweeping drilling plan on a large tract of state-owned land on the eastern edge of Aurora.
“The Colorado legislature told ECMC to protect disproportionately impacted communities from drilling,” Andrew Forkes-Gudmundson, senior manager for state policy at environmental group Earthworks, said in a press release. “Instead, the Commission has created a roadmap for oil and gas companies to drill near homes in those communities. These rules will put at risk the health and safety of Colorado communities.”
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