As the Grand Junction Sentinel’s Dennis Webb reports–a few weeks ago, Gov. John Hickenlooper announced measures intended to prevent the recurrence of an explosion inside a home in Firestone that killed two people and leveled the structure, an explosion later determined to be caused by methane gas seeping into the home’s foundations from an improperly abandoned well nearby. Flowlines from that well allowed the gas into the home, calling attention to a major statewide problem of abandoned oil and gas development infrastructure. Hickenlooper’s announced fixes have been debated as a potentially too-small response to a problem that will only get worse as the urbanizing Front Range expands into current and formerly drilled areas.
But as the Sentinel reports, a pair of energy biz-friendly GOP lawmakers is pushing back even against Hickenlooper’s small-scale proposed fixes:
State Sen. Ray Scott and state Rep. Bob Rankin are asking Colorado’s top oil and gas regulator to justify why more funds are needed to pay for plugging abandoned wells.
The two made the request in a letter written Wednesday to Matt Lepore, director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
They wrote it after Gov. John Hickenlooper made several recommendations for new laws or regulations in response to the April home explosion in Firestone that killed two men and was linked to gas flowing from an abandoned flowline from a nearby well. One recommendation was the creation of a nonprofit fund to plug and abandon orphan wells and provide refunds for in-home methane monitors. Orphan wells are ones for which no owner or operator can be found, or the owner or operator is unwilling or unable to plug and properly abandon it.
“We are writing to request your assistance regarding the size and scope of the abandoned well situation in Colorado,” Scott and Rankin said in their letter to Lepore. They pointed to what they called Hickenlooper’s suggestion that “the abandoned well problem is so vast in scope that new taxes and fees are necessary to stand up a new organization to address the problem.”
Even Matt Lepore, Gov. Hickenlooper’s rather infamously pro-industry director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, says that the amount of money oil companies are required to bond for plugging old wells is inadequate, having last been increased almost a decade ago and to a level still not enough to cover the need.
But apparently even Hickenlooper’s limited actions in response to the Firestone explosion are too much for Republicans in the legislature! Politically, questioning these baby steps as potential “overreach” following such a high-profile disaster is incredibly tone-deaf–if not for the Western Slope “gaspatch Republicans” in this story, then certainly for Republicans who have to answer to worried suburban homeowners along the Front Range.
At some point, public safety has to come before private profit. Doesn’t it?
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Hey, more power to 'em. The harder they work to eliminate the bullshit illusory "safety net" that folks like Hick are trying to create, the closer they bring Colorado Democrats to actually having to create laws that protect Coloradans.
For Colorados' Republican oil and gas lobbyists/legislators?…nope. Never has …don't think it ever will.
What needs to happen is, before a company is allowed to drill a well, they need to file a plan that includes how they're going to seal it off after the gas plays out. No plan, no drilling permit. And I still say there needs to be a law that requires GIS mapping for the gas patch, same as for any other utility. You don't hear Xcel, Qwest, or Comcast whining that "Someone might tap the lines if they know where they are." And those are much less likely to go BOOM and kill people than the gas lines are.
The problem isn't the plan. The problem is that creating a real enforcement regime requires them to put up a bond (and not one that lets them pretend they'll retain sufficient assets) to cover the costs of cleanup/shutdown. Because, what generally happens is they'll simply go out of business to avoid paying any real money. We as a state aren't willing to do that because it hurts the extractors' widdle
profitsfeewings.I was once told by an expert in well reclamation that Colorados' taxpayers will wind up spending over a billion dollars to clean up after the Oily Boys, such are the states' pitiful bonding requirements and enforcement of same. It is mostly the small companies that forfeit their miniscule bonds when they close down.
The requirements for the big companies are beyond a joke. They can drill a hundred wells or more on a single bond that, last I heard was $100,000. That is enough to clean up, one…maybe two wells.