You ask - "Fair enough but tell me which of those goals do you feel are currently not being addressed by the O & G industry? "
State regulation is inadequate. If I can't breathe the rest of your questions don't matter too much to me. The methane needs to be captured instead of being discharged into the air.
I'm sure these issues are not unique to Colorado.
Colorado’s oil and gas industry has grown rapidly over the past two decades, largely due to the combination of new hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and horizontal drilling techniques that allow companies to drill more than a mile deep and miles in every direction to break up deep shale formations that contain reservoirs of oil and natural gas. The technology has led to a transformation of the U.S. energy portfolio and enormous profits for many energy companies and governments that have reaped the benefits of this “shale revolution.” According to the state, Colorado’s “active well count” more than doubled from about 22,500 in 2002 to 53,102 currently.
Many laws governing oil and gas development were written before the new technologies prompted a proliferation of drilling along the Front Range, where atmospheric conditions contributed to poor air quality even before the current hydrocarbon boom.
Federal and state regulations generally were also written before scientists fully grasped the consequences on the climate from burning so many fossil fuels. A recent international report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that if humans do not significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions within about 12 years, Earth will warm enough to disrupt human societies and severely damage the planet’s ecological systems.
As drilling expanded and pollution worsened, pressure mounted for more stringent oversight. Four Colorado communities — Boulder, Broomfield, Lafayette and Fort Collins – passed bans on fracking in 2012 and 2013. Hickenlooper, a former oil and gas geologist whose promotion of the industry once took the form of publicly drinking fracking fluid to attest to its safety, opposed those local bans. A 2016 state Supreme Court ruling struck them down.
Facing criticism for being too lenient on the industry as he sought reelection in 2014, Hickenlooper proposed a set of regulations requiring oil and gas companies to install vapor-recovery tanks and other devices to capture emissions, to detect and repair leaks, and to report them to the state. The new rules aimed to reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs – such as the cancer-causing chemical benzene – which have a number of health impacts from direct exposures. VOC emissions also combine with other chemicals and sunlight to create ozone, the main ingredient in smog. (See video: A scientist’s view)
The rules received much fanfare for also regulating emissions of methane, the main component of natural gas and a powerful heat-trapping gas that is contributing to global warming. No other state had such methane restrictions, which went far beyond what the EPA required.
At the time the state passed its oil and gas regulations in February 2014, health officials attributed 30% of methane and non-methane hydrocarbon pollution in the Denver area to the oil and gas industry. Some studies have attributed up to 55% of “ozone production potential” – the combination of the right chemical ingredients and the right atmospheric conditions needed to create smog – to oil and gas emissions along the northern Front Range. In Weld County, according to another study that surveys existing research, oil and gas contributes to 80% of “total point source VOC emissions,” key building blocks of the region’s smog problem. High ozone levels can lead to asthma and heart disease as well as other medical problems.
Colorado’s regulations are tougher than those in many other parts of the country, but, as in other states, these rules rely primarily upon industry self-reporting. In 2017, more than 17,000 methane leaks were identified by oil and gas companies, which is half as many as they reported in 2015. Industry officials say these numbers show an increased vigilance on the part of companies, which have an economic interest in capturing and selling the methane they produce.
But environmentalists and residents of Colorado’s increasingly active oil and gas patch say the fact that we have stronger rules than other states doesn’t necessarily mean those rules are effective, and evidence of various health impacts from fracking is growing.
At a recent presentation at the state’s Air Quality Control Commission meeting, members of an air quality task force heard from residents from around the state asking for tighter controls on oil and gas operations. Commissioners asked whether the industry was willing to embrace stricter rules right now. Attorney Sura responded in frustration that Colorado’s air quality has been so persistently bad precisely because policy makers have “only been willing to regulate if the industry approves it.”
“That’s not regulation,” he said.
Jeremy Nichols, the climate and energy program director for the environmental group WildEarth Guardians and an expert on oil and gas emissions regulations, said that Colorado’s frequently cited tough rules are “smoke and mirrors to cover up the extent of the ozone problem.”
“The state will say that they’re working cooperatively with industry to reduce emissions and that these violations are minor,” Nichols said. “The problem is, they say that for every violation, for every company, and every facility.” He echoes what others who have studied the regulations have concluded: Any system that relies so much on industry self-monitoring and reporting is rife for abuse.
Ben Marter, Colorado Petroleum Council spokesman, did not respond directly to a question about criticisms that Colorado’s self-reporting system may be flawed. Marter said in an email that the industry has a “legacy of environmental stewardship” that is “based on a transparent, collaborative process in which operators, state regulators and local officials work together” to develop regulations that are specific to Colorado.
The state’s efforts to independently confirm the emission levels reported by the industry and enforce regulations are severely hampered by chronic underfunding of both the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), which issues permits for companies to pollute. Jill Ryan, the department’s newly appointed director, told The Story Group that the CDPHE’s Air Pollution Inspection Division, in particular, “has been under-resourced for years, and maybe even decades.”
As oil and gas production has skyrocketed, CDPHE’s budget has failed to keep pace, averaging around $500 million a year over the last seven years, roughly $25 million of which goes to its Air Quality Control Division. That division’s oil and gas office has only nine inspectors who together make an average of 320 “full compliance evaluations” per year on the state’s more than 50,000 wells. Many of those inspections are scheduled, as opposed to unannounced.
For its part, the COGCC, which has seen its budget gradually increase over the last decade, has five field supervisors and 18 field staff who, as a team, inspect each active well in the state. Department of Natural Resources spokesman Chris Arend said the team conducts inspections of active well sites about once every two years.
The COGCC has made headlines over the past few years for its record of never having denied an oil and gas company a permit to drill. But the state public health agency is likely to come under increased scrutiny as well. State Sen. Mike Foote, an East Boulder County Democrat who long has championed oil and gas reform, said that lawmakers have “never paid much attention to CDPHE.”
“That will need to change,” Foote said.
Jeremy Murtaugh worked for 12 years as an inspector at CDPHE’s Air Pollution Control Division before resigning earlier this year out of frustration with the state’s lax approach to oil and gas companies. (See sidebar: A former Colorado air quality inspector speaks out.) He said that during “full compliance evaluations” of oil and gas operations, he and fellow state inspectors found violations about 25% to 30% of the time. In contrast, he notes, oil and gas companies’ comparable testing reports about their own operations find violations only about 5% of the time.
Murtaugh, in addition to a private contractor who monitors oil and gas facilities on behalf of companies and who did not want his name used out of concern that he would lose business, independently told The Story Group that they have observed occasions when oil and gas employees have adjusted their equipment to change the test results or contractors have been asked by companies to do so.
“It’s cheating, plain and simple,” said Murtaugh, who resigned after his bosses discovered he had taken documents he said he believed would protect him in a whistleblower action. He said he returned the documents, and none were used in this reporting. The Story Group spoke with several of Murtaugh’s former co-workers, all of whom described him as a committed and “professional” inspector.
Dan Haley, president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, did not respond to allegations that some companies cover up their pollution violations by tinkering with their equipment and said in an email that the trade group could not “speculate about comments made by a former state employee.”
Garry Kaufman, director of the state’s Air Pollution Control Division at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, would not comment on personnel matters relating to Murtaugh. He said he has not seen an analysis of how often the industry self-reports violations compared to how often state inspectors do, but that Murtaugh’s numbers “sound a little surprising to me.” He added: “By and large, most of the operators try to get it right.”
Kaufman acknowledged that oil and gas companies have “operational staff” who generally are not as knowledgeable about regulatory issues as companies’ environmental compliance officers. “Sometimes, they’re not reporting things that should be reported.” If there are discrepancies between industry self-reports and inspectors’ reports, Kaufman said, “the division may address these inaccuracies through enforcement as well if deemed appropriate.” Kaufman also noted that there are many different kinds of operators and operations, from older, unmanned facilities to state-of-the-art multi-well pads, and each of them has multiple emissions sources for the division to track. “It’s a big challenge to find the right level of enforcement,” he said.
“The emissions are still too high, and it’s not a theoretical problem,” he said. “We need to do better and there’s a lot of political will to make that happen now.”
