Fracking Our Future: Western Resource Advocates

Source: Western Resource Advocates

We are entering a new era in oil and gas development in the West, and nowhere is that more evident than along the Front Range of Colorado. Increased drilling and production near communities and populated areas — much closer to population centers than in previous decades — are raising new questions about potential impacts to water supplies, air and water quality, noise levels, and property values.


This report addresses one of the most important issues: that of water availability for new oil and gas development in Colorado. Specifically, it addresses the questions, “How much water is required for new production, and where will that water come from?” Colorado is a semi-arid state with limited water resources that must be shared by a wide variety of water users. Western Resource Advocates (WRA) — along with communities, businesses, institutions, and citizens throughout the state — have concerns about water needs for oil and gas development and how that demand impacts our water resources. This report will inform elected officials, decision makers, communities, and families about oil and gas industry water needs and the potential impacts and tradeoffs that must be addressed. It provides specific recommendations that decision makers can use in creating policies to make sure that Colorado’s water resources are properly managed along with oil and gas development. 



LINK TO PDF

Bakken Shale Drilling Activity 2010 [TIMELAPSE]

Uploaded by TheTimoneyGroup on Mar 1, 2011
Tweeted By: @OccupyGreed

NORTH DAKOTA DRILLING TIMELAPSE
 

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Might we interest you in our backyard? Have a look at 18,000 active oil and gas wells in Weld County, Colorado. Absolutely SICK SHIT!

Aerial Images of Fracking Pads - Fracking Site Images

April 1st, 2012

Aerial images of fracking pads, fracking sites in Colorado. We encourage you to spend time looking very closely at the images as you will eventually find more wells than you initially thought existed. You may find historic wellpads that appear to not have been remediated/reclaimed, or liquid spills that burn the ground due to the toxic nature of the chemicals. The images show the 'pig-greed' disgusting nature of the oil and gas industry as they literally destroy the land of the people of America.

 Please click images individually to enlarge

#@!! you Oil and Gas! Your bullshit propaganda and snake oil advertisements you pedal to the markets and the people of America are false. *Take your nonsense rhetoric and  jump in an open evaporation pit of flowback fluid & produced water and drink your way out. *But for your safety (we do not recommend doing this).

Leave our lands alone. Stop harming the innocent people, our water, our air and contaminating our Constitutional Rights!

Colorado farms planning for dry spell losing auction bids for water to fracking projects

By Bruce Finley
The Denver Post

Front Range farmers bidding for water to grow crops through the coming hot summer and possible drought face new competition from oil and gas drillers.

At Colorado's premier auction for unallocated water this spring, companies that provide water for hydraulic fracturing at well sites were top bidders on supplies once claimed exclusively by farmers.

The prospect of tussling with energy industry giants over water leaves some farmers and environmentalists uneasy.

"What impact to our environment and our agricultural heritage are Coloradans willing to stomach for drilling and fracking?" said Gary Wockner, director of the Save the Poudre Coalition — devoted to protecting the Cache la Poudre River.

"Farm water grows crops, but it also often supports wildlife, wetlands and streamflows back to our rivers. Most drilling and fracking water is lost from the hydrological cycle forever," Wockner said. "Any transfer of water from rivers and farms to drilling and fracking will negatively impact Colorado's environment and wildlife."

The Northern Water Conservancy District runs the auction, offering excess water diverted from the Colorado River Basin — 25,000 acre-feet so far this year — and conveyed through a 13-mile tunnel under the Continental Divide.

A growing portion of that water now will be pumped thousands of feet underground at well sites to coax out oil and gas.

State officials charged with promoting and regulating the energy industry estimated that fracking required about 13,900 acre-feet in 2010. That's a small share of the total water consumed in Colorado, about 0.08 percent. However, this fast-growing share already exceeds the amount that the ski industry draws from mountain rivers for making artificial snow. Each oil or gas well drilled requires 500,000 to 5 million gallons of water.

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Support SB 107 - Vote Yes on the Fracking Safety Act [ONLINE VOTE]

By Senator Morgan Carroll (Contact)

To be delivered to: The Colorado State House, The Colorado State Senate, and Governor John Hickenlooper

Colorado is experiencing an unprecedented boom in oil and gas drilling. 

It is critical that any fracking activity be done in a responsible manner that avoids harm to property values, protects Colorado's water supply, and protects the public health and environment. 

Drilling activity near radioactive materials, Superfund sites, explosives, endangered habitat, or in residential areas poses serious risks if not handled properly. 

In the interest of our people, land and water, I am asking that you please vote "yes" on SB 107, the Fracking Safety Act.

TO SIGN - CLICK HERE

Will Fracking Destroy Colorado's Rivers?

Clean Water Action
By Gary Wockner

Oil and gas drilling and fracking pose extraordinary threats to Colorado's Denver metro and Front Range cities including to air quality, water quality in streams and groundwater, wildlife habitat, private property rights, and landscape health. These impacts are generally similar wherever drilling and fracking occurs across the U.S.

But what makes drilling and fracking unique in Colorado -- and especially across Colorado's Front Range from Fort Collins to Pueblo -- is its threat to Colorado's rivers.

Why? Drilling and fracking use a lot of water, and water is already in short supply along the Front Range. In fact, many fast-growing Colorado cities predict they will have a shortage of water in the next decade and are already proposing new water supply projects that will further drain Colorado's already severely degraded rivers. And, the very same cities that are proposing new water projects are also selling increasing amounts of water for fracking.

First, the Windy Gap Firming Project proposes to drain up to an additional 30,000 acre feet(nearly 10 billion gallons) of water out of the severely degraded Upper Colorado River every year and pipe and pump that water to northern Front Range Colorado cities including Loveland, Longmont, and Greeley. At the very same time, those same three cities have recently started selling water for fracking, and Greeley has started selling large quantities for fracking -- over 1,500acre feet (500 million gallons) in 2011 and climbing. The Upper Colorado already has 60 percent of its water drained out and has severe problems with water quality and water temperature such that fish and aquatic insects are on the brink of survival.

(Click here to view a satellite image of 142 water tankers surrounding a frack site south of Greeley, Colorado)

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Open Letter to Governor Hickenlooper [FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE]

Hey Gov,... you got a little oil and gas on your tooth.
WTFrack.org

Coalition for a Clean Colorado

Open Letter to Governor Hickenlooper

The Coalition for a Clean Colorado is a newly formed alliance of grassroots citizen groups working to protect their communities from destructive oil and gas drilling and fracking. We are united in our belief, that clean air and water, clean government and an economy powered by local, clean energy are essential for healthy communities and a livable future. We depend on and expect our elected officials to represent and protect our interests.




Your recent advertisements on behalf of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA), an industry that stands to reap billions from the accelerated extraction of dirty and life threatening fossil energy, is in direct conflict with your sworn duty to prevent adverse environmental and human health impacts to the People of Colorado, and a shocking breach of public trust.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission’s own database confirms over 1,000 oil and gas spills have impacted groundwater since 2009. These releases and other chemical emissions, legalized through multiple industry exemptions, have long impacted the health, safety and welfare of our communities. It’s time these impacts be acknowledged and mitigated with the level of diligence the citizens of Colorado deserve.

County land use regulations, ordinances and charter amendments empowered by the Colorado Constitution and upheld by the courts, are the only means left for people to protect their communities from the abuses of an overly powerful industry. Two weeks ago, thousands of citizens and the legislature spoke firmly against total state preemption as embodied in HB 12-088 and in favor of local regulatory authority over oil and gas activities.

Your executive order on fracking goes against the will of the people and undermines our democratic process. We, the people of Colorado who will be directly affected by its decisions, are in no way represented by the Task Force; therefore, we call on you to rescind the executive order.

Respectfully,

· Jennifer Palazzolo, for Coalition for a Clean Colorado
· Ceal Smith, for Renewable Communities Alliance
· Keli Kringel, President for Citizens for Huerfano County, La Veta
· Sonia Skakich-Scrima, Founder, for What the Frack?! Arapahoe
· Joe Bassman, for LongmontROAR, Longmont
· April Beach, for Erie Rising, Erie
· Rick Blotter, for Elbert County Oil & Gas Interest Group (ECOGIG), Agate
· Ken Regelson, for RenewablesYES!, Boulder
· Doris LeDue, for The South Park Coalition, Inc., Como
· Phil Doe, for Be The Change, Denver
· Robert James IV, for Be The Change, USA, Lakewood
· Kyle Elston, for Routt County Frack, Steamboat Springs
· Alison Gannett, Founder for North Fork Fracking, Paonia
· Lisa Bracken, for Journey of the Forsaken, Silt

· Greg Eells, PE for Coloradoans for Fair Rates and Clean Energy (CO-FORCE)
· Kathleen Dudley, for Drilling Mora County, Mora, NM
· B. Arrindell, Director for Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, Milanille, PA

New signatories since first release:
· Fred Kirsch, Director for Community for Sustainable Energy, Ft. Collins
· Cecelia Severance, for Rural Property Owners Association, Walsenburg
· Tracy Dahl, North Fork Ranch, Weston
· Ashley Collins, for Citizens for Safe Fracking in Adams County, Commerce City

SIGN the c3 PETITION HERE

to tell Hickenlooper: Clean Up Colorado!

Committee Review of House Bill 1277 Assuring Local Control of Oil Gas Regulation - PLEASE SIGN

Change.org|Start an Online Petition »

Now House Bill 12-1277 is in Committee this Monday!

House Bill 1277 gives local governments more control. Let's support this bill which gives local county governments the power to regulate oil and gas activities. The provision to allow a ban was removed, and we need to ask that it be put back in.

Event: Committee Review of House Bill 1277 Assuring Local Control of Oil Gas Regulation


Start: Monday, February 20, 2012 1:30 to 3:30 pm


HB12-1277 expressly reconfirms that local land use regulation of the impacts of oil and gas operations, including fracking, is an important state interest, and that requirements imposed by the COGCC are in addition to NOT instead of local land use permit requirements. Oil and gas operations have to go through city or county permitting processes in which local governments can impose conditions or even reject a permit for fracking wells that do not satisfy local permit requirements.

Click here to view the bill in its entirety

Oil mergers, acquisitions total $9.9 billion in region last year

By Mark Jaffe
The Denver Postdenverpost.com
2/9/2012

The prospect of large oil reserves in Rocky Mountain shale and tight-sands formations generated nearly $10 billion in merger- and-acquisition deals in the region in 2011, according to two studies released Wednesday.

The $9.9 billion in deals represents a 32 percent increase over 2010, according to a study by accounting and consulting firm De- loitte LLP.

"It is clear people are really focused on these oil-rich plays," said Roger Ihne, Deloitte's Mid-Americas portfolio leader.

The biggest draw in the region is the Niobrara shale formation, which stretches from El Paso County into Wyoming, said Pete Stark, a vice president with consultant IHS.

"The little guys and some larger independents developed the resource," Stark said. "They 'derisked' the play. Now the big companies with resources to develop hundreds or thousands of wells move in."

Denver and Colorado will be a focal point in that development, according to consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers.

"Rocky Mountain deals were of particular focus for many energy companies throughout 2011," Rowena Cipriano-Reyes, a Denver-based PwC partner, said in a statement.

"With Colorado's geographical convenience and proximity to booming oil and gas markets, companies will remain drawn to this region in 2012," Cipriano-Reyes said.

In 2011, there were 191 deals nationally with values greater than $50 million, accounting for $186.5 billion — a 35 percent increase over 2010, according to PwC.

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Lobbyist: Bill threatens local controls on oil & gas

John Colson
Post Independent Staff
Glenwood Springs, Colorado CO
Feb 5 2012

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colorado — A bill before the Colorado Legislature is aimed at eliminating any local control over oil and gas activities, according to the Colorado Municipal League, which is opposing the bill.

Introduced by state Sen. Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch, Senate Bill 88 is before the Senate Local Government Committee, chaired by Sen. Joyce Foster, D-Denver. Its title is “Preempt Local Regulation of Oil and Gas Operations.”

According to a bulletin in the Colorado Municipal League's Jan. 23 Statehouse Report, the bill is “aimed at radically limiting or completely extinguishing local government authority over one class of industrial land use: oil and gas operations.”

Garfield County Commissioner John Martin, however, believes the bill is little more than a restatement of existing law.

“As I read it, local regulations are the ones that would be ‘operational conflicts,'” Martin said. He was referring to existing state law that gives the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) complete jurisdiction over, as Martin termed it, “everything on the pad and underground.”

Local governments, Martin continued, have jurisdiction only over the land-use aspects of the industry, including traffic concerns, air and water quality issues, and the creation of man camps to house employees who work on the drilling rigs and other remote facilities.

“I see it as pretty much the status quo,” Martin said.

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Fracking opponent seeks amendments - Voters could decide on water in natural streams

DailyCamera

By Catherine Tsai

Associated Press

Posted: 02/04/2012

Illustration:ddsnorth ddsnorth ™

DENVER -- An opponent of hydraulic fracturing south of Denver is leading an effort to have voters decide on two proposals that critics say would change the way Colorado has handled water rights since 1876.

The Colorado Constitution says unappropriated water in natural streams is public property, but water can be diverted for beneficial uses. It then outlines the state's "first come, first serve" approach to having water users with older, or senior water rights take what they're due from limited rivers or streams before those with junior water rights.

 

Denver-area resident Phillip Doe has proposed amending the constitution to highlight the clause saying streams are public property -- and making the public ownership legally superior to longstanding water rights, contracts or property law. A related proposal would spell out in the constitution that water rights can be constricted to prohibit uses that would harm the public's ownership in the water, and water that goes back into rivers would have to be returned unimpaired.

"It reaffirms and reasserts that the public of Colorado owns the water, and the state has an obligation to protect the public's interests," said attorney Richard Hamilton, who is working with Doe.

But State Rep. Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling, said ballot proposals 3 and 45 would turn the way Colorado handles water upside-down.

"It's the most devastating thing that could happen to the state of Colorado," said Sonnenberg, a farmer and rancher.

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#WTFrack

Total ban on fracking not possible, says panel of experts in Colorado

By Monte WhaleyThe Denver Post

COMMERCE CITY — Residents on Tuesday night learned that Colorado cities cannot ban hydraulic fracturing outright in their communities, but they were told there are other ways to ensure the drilling will be done safely.

About 100 people wary of extraction operations near their homes listened quietly as they were told any effort to outlaw those procedures would likely be overturned by a judge. Attorney Barbara Green also said there is little a city can do to regulate the chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

But cities can have a say over the impacts a fracking well will have on local wildlife and other environmental concerns, Green said.

"Those kinds of regulations are more supportable," she said.

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By the way, the Denver Post appears to be a PROFRACKING News agency! It appears that everything they spew out is favorable to the industry. 

Colorado State of Mind Episode: Fracking (VIDEO)

Source: RMPBS.ORG
12/16/2011


The discussion focuses on the rules surrounding hydraulic fracturing -- or fracking. Controversy has been mounting as this kind of energy extraction hits closer to home.

Watch Fracking on PBS. See more from Colorado State of Mind.

Colorado Springs imposes drilling moratorium - Voted 8-0

Denver Business Journal
By: Cathy Proctor
Date: Thursday, December 1, 2011

Colorado Springs’ city council on Wednesday voted 8-0 to impose an “emergency ordinance” creating a six-month moratorium on applications for oil and gas operations within city limits, a move that could delay Houston’s Ultra Petroleum Corp. Ultra Petroleum Corp.Latest from The Business JournalsColorado Springs imposes drilling moratoriumUltra CEO named trade group vice chairmanEl Paso County eases oil and gas moratoriumFollow this company to drill on its land in the city.

Several citizens spoke in favor of the moratorium and a representative of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association, an industry trade group, spoke against it before the vote, a city spokesman said.

Ultra (NYSE: UPL) in October spent $20 million to buy 18,000 undeveloped acres of the Banning-Lewis Ranch, a parcel long slated for residential and commercial development on the east side of the city — and inside city limits, for oil and gas exploration.

The previous landowners filed bankruptcy in October 2010; the sale was designed to raise money to pay off creditors.

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Colorado: Facing boom, Huerfano County citizens group makes push for tougher oil and gas drilling regulations

Posted on November 19, 2011
by Bob Berwyn   
Summit County Citizens Voice

“We don’t want our communities to become yet another industrial sacrifice zone.”

~Ken Saydak

Fracking rigs are popping up like mushrooms,

and citizens of Huerfano County, Colorado

 are concerned about impacts to their communities

and the environment.

SUMMIT COUNTY — With the leasing of almost 40,000 acres of BLM mineral rights in Huerfano County, citizens are pressing their county commissioners to adopt tougher local oil and gas drilling regulations.

The commissioners this week voted to adopt new regulations following a boisterous public hearing, but those might not be tough enough. Dozens of residents expressed concerns that the regulations don’t go far enough to protect citizens from the harmful effects of natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

“These regulations may have been the best in Colorado in 1997, but are they adequate in 2011 to protect citizens from fracking in a high risk geological environment for drilling like Huerfano County?” said Sandy Borthick, a member of Citizens for Huerfano County, a recently formed 400-member group.

Huerfano County initially adopted the regulations in 2009 after Coal Bed Methane drilling caused widespread problems including explosions, contaminated drinking wells, water depletions and decimation of a local dairy farm.

At the time the commissioners titled the regulations to only apply to CBM. According to County Planner Steve Channel, the BOCC didn’t want to apply the regulations to “deeper drilling that had been operating for years in the county without incident.” Those drilling operations included several natural gas wells and a large CO2 gas well complex.

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Front Range oil bonanza could mean billions in revenues for Colorado

By Mark Jaffe
 The Denver Post
11/15/2011

Colorado's Front Range​ is sitting on top of as much as a billion barrels of oil, which could inject $4 billion a year in revenues into Colorado's economy, according to one estimate. Houston-based Anadarko made the oil-reserve estimate based on 11 horizontal wells it drilled in the Wattenberg Field in Weld County.

The company put the range of the reserves as equivalent to 500 million to 1.5 billion barrels of oil — about 70 percent of the production in oil, the rest in natural gas.

"This is going to have huge implications for the economy of Colorado," said Pete Stark, vice president for industry relations at IHS, a Denver-based consulting firm.

A reserve that size could generate 150,000 barrels a day and, assuming oil is $80 a barrel, provide more than $4 billion in annual revenues, Stark estimated.The total value of goods and services produced in the state in 2010 was $235.15 billion.

"Anadarko's announcement today shows once again that Colorado is a leader in the energy sector of our country's economy," Gov. John Hickenlooper said in a statement Monday. "We are thrilled to see the company plan a significant investment in Colorado."

Anadarko's wells had initial production averages of 800 barrels a day — with the best well producing 1,100 barrels a day.


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To the State Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and the oil and gas industry: KEEP YOUR POLLUTION AND LIES!

Health over wealth.  Being healthy and living in a healthy environment is worth more than any handful of pennies you bring to the table to the State and the citizens of Colorado!  It would take all of your greedy profits to remediate all of the exempt loophole damages you force-feed Colorado, its citizens and the environment. We are not a National Sacrifice Zone and we will not die for your greed!

Clean Air

Clean Water

Clean Soils

Safe Drinking Water

Contaminated Water Wells

Contaminated Aquifers

Contaminated Soils

Corroded Flow line

Produced Water Vault Sucked Dry (discharged into groundwater)

Superfund Sites

Corrupt Politicians

WE THE PEOPLE

Pump Produced Water into Rivers and Bodies of Water

Well bore Lost Pressure

Hole in Well bore

1%

Old Cement Jobs

Mechanical Problems

Corporate Identity

Contaminated water Wells

Emergency Funding

Methane Seeps

Blowouts

Explosions

Fugitive Emissions

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC)

VOC Flares

Invisible Killers

Dioxins and Furans

Contaminated DNA

No Environment Identity

Chemicals

More Chemicals

Non-Biodegradable Chemicals

Radioactive Tracers

Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM)

Industrial Waste

Unrecovered Industrial Waste

Confusion

Citizens Have No Rights

99%

Constitutional Rights

No Radioactive Materials Testing

Municipal Water

Dead Water

Contaminate

Toxic

Drought

Split Estate

Acid

Threats

Non-Disclosure

Evaporation Pits

Noise Pollution

Leaking Flow lines

Occupy Our Rights

Unknown Volumes of Produced Water Discharges

Class II Injection Wells

Berm Failures

Benzene

Toluene

Xylene

Ethylene

Dead Animals

Endocrine Disruptors

Renal Failure

Trade Secrets

Death/Benefit

Pennies for Peasants

Lies

Deceit

Special Interest

Jobs (my ass)

Propaganda

Dirty Fuel