AURORA | A possible fall election battle over oil and gas well safety has heated arguments from opposing sides matching summer highs across Colorado.
Opponents of a potential ballot initiative to expand setbacks for oil and gas operations from homes and schools are focusing some of their attacks on the state’s education budget. But supporters of the proposed setbacks are focused on school safety and say the budget talk is nothing but a smoke screen.
Proposition 97, which backers Rising Colorado are gathering signatures for, would increase setbacks for any new oil and gas operations to 2,500 feet on non-federal lands. That’s a significant increase over the state’s current standards of 500 feet for homes and 1,000 feet for high occupancy buildings such as schools and hospitals. The initiative would also add “vulnerable areas” to setback requirements, including playgrounds, public parks, amphitheaters, rivers and streams along with a slew of other sites.
According to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, Initiative 97 would effectively eliminate new wells on 54 percent of all federal land in Colorado, and 85 percent of non-federal lands in the state.
The Colorado Alliance of Mineral and Royalty Owners, a major source of opposition to the initiative, wants voters to consider the potential hit the state’s education budget would take if new exploration was curtailed to such an extent.
Neil Ray, president of CAMRO, said that while current wells would be grandfathered in, once those stopped producing the state would lose significant revenues if new exploration couldn’t take place. CAMRO has pointed to the $560 million statewide school accounts have received in revenue from oil and gas leases in Colorado’s Wattenberg Field since the 1980s. That’s the 2,000 mile or so gas field between metro Denver and Greeley.
Ray said it would also be a major impact to owners of the rights, especially those who rely on the revenues to help pay for college education and fund operations on farms.
“The language in (Initiative) 97 prohibits new wells, and most wells that have produced and contributed so much money in last two years have a rapid decline curve (for output),” Ray said. “Unless you continue to drill new wells, that (state) income will go away.”
Micah Parkin, a board member for Colorado Rising, said it was “amusing” that CAMRO is arguing that the state’s education fund could take a major hit. She cited a budget shortfall at the state’s Oil and Gas Commission from decreasing royalties, which could end up being backfilled by money from the state’s General Fund.
“Those General Fund (dollars) are what actually go to pay for teachers and schools,” Parkin said. “We feel the oil and gas industry should not be able to operate dangerous industrial operations in our neighborhoods.”
Parkin said the real school issue with Initiative 97 is safety of children in such close proximity to oil and gas operations. She said 80 percent of more than 700 studies on fracking in the past few years have found it to be harmful to health or pose a risk, including explosions like in the incident in Firestone where an old gas line was ruptured and killed two people in their home.
Instead, Parkin said oil and gas exploration could be conducted from much farther away from vulnerable areas considering fracking can take places several miles away from the well.
“It’s the precautionary principle, where not having these sorts of industrial activities too close to our children just makes sense,” Parkin said. “Harm is being done in many places.”
Ray said Rising Colorado and backers of Initiative 97 were using scare tactics to try and put an end to oil and gas exploration in the state.
“The Colorado Department of Public Health has in the recent rule makings been involved in having a seat on the commission, and has increased its permitting regulations for oil and gas. There the primary source of information for public health (in the state) and they’re publishing papers that there’s very little to worry about,” Ray said. “(Rules) should be based on the engineering and science that leads to proper regulation and rulemaking.”
Ray warned that if the initiative passes, the state could expect a slew of lawsuits from mineral rights holders who couldn’t access their property. That idea is something Parkin said was absurd and pointed to states like Maryland that have banned fracking and have not been faced with paying out mineral rights owners for potential lost revenues.
Rising Colorado has until August to gather enough valid signatures to get the initiative on the November ballot.