Boulder to consider new set of oil and gas regs

BOULDER — Boulder could soon see its moratorium on oil and gas activity in the city replaced with a fresh set of regulations intended to limit where drilling and extraction could occur.

The Boulder City Council is set to hold a public hearing Tuesday for an emergency measure that would put these new regulations in place prior to the expiration of the most recent moratorium on Dec. 31.

“The city of Boulder currently has no specific land use regulations on oil and gas

operations,” city staffers wrote in a memo to Boulder officials. “Until recently, local government’s authority to regulate oil and gas operations was very limited.”

That changed with the 2019 passage of Senate Bill 181, in which the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission grants local governments the authority to impose their own limits on oil and gas activity within their borders. 

Under the proposed regulations, oil and gas operators would have to provide a series of applications and an alternative site analysis. The cost of an application would be $3,680 plus additional fees.

Operators would have to hold neighborhood meetings in impacted areas and would be permitted to operate only in industrial, manufacturing and agricultural zones. 

“In some cases, an applicant may need to do geophysical exploration or seismic testing to

see if a site is suitable for a potential oil and gas operation,” according to a city memo.

The Planning Board would be the decision-making authority on applications, and the Boulder City Council would have the option to call up projects for additional review. 

Setback requirements would be 2,000 feet from any residential dwelling, school or licensed childcare facility. That distance would increase to 2,500 feet for multi-well pads.

“With the 2,000-foot setback, very few properties in the city limits are eligible for oil and

gas operations under the COGCC standards,” according to a city memo. “… There are properties owned by IBM, agricultural land in the flagpole that connects Gunbarrel to the rest of the city and the city-owned land in Gunbarrel that could be eligible as well as some properties in the Flatirons Business Park off 55th Street.”

The American Petroleum Institute Colorado has long opposed Boulder’s series of moratoria.

“API would like to point out that Colorado’s oil and gas operators have continued to negotiate in good faith with state regulators and impacted local communities in order to find real solutions to complex issues, and the result of those good faith efforts are evident throughout Colorado,” the lobbying group wrote in letter to city officials. 

In addition to the new regulations, the measure under consideration by the Boulder City Council would implement the oil and gas pollution tax approved by the voters in 2018. The tax applies a charge of “up to $6.90 per barrel of oil and up to $0.88 per thousand cubic feet of natural gas for oil or gas extracted” within the city limits. 

Because there is a need to implement these measure in advance of the moratorium expiration at the end of the year, Boulder officials are seeking an emergency ordinance

“Ordinances adopted as emergency measures are effective immediately upon final passage and require a two-thirds vote of council members present to be passed,” a city memo said. “Staff finds that adoption as an emergency measure is necessary to ensure that standards are in place before an application for oil and gas operations is filed that regulate surface impacts of oil and gas operations and protect and minimize adverse impacts to public health, safety, and welfare and the environment and wildlife resources.”

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