Title
Study Session of Oil and Gas LDC Updates
Body
Summary and Background Information:
In 2012, Commerce City adopted its current set of Oil and Gas regulations, which require any potential operators to obtain an Oil and Gas Permit, and execute an Extraction Agreement. Since of the adoption of these rules, the landscape of oil and gas regulation at the state level has increased significantly. Since 2012, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) has conducted a number of rulemaking procedures, which have modified requirements such as school setbacks, flowline regulations, spill reporting, and many other items. Most significantly, on April 16th, 2019, Governor Polis signed Senate Bill 19-181 into law, which expressly gave local governments more authority to regulate the surface impacts of resource extraction. The bill expressly modifies state pre-emption by authorizing local government regulation that is more stringent than state standards. This now allows local governments to regulate the following items:
· Location and siting of O&G facilities and locations
· Impacts on government facilities and services
· Water quality and source, noise, vibration, odor, light dust, emergency preparedness, security, traffic, transportation impacts
· Financial securities, indemnification and insurance
· All other nuisance-type effects of O&G development
· Inspect all O&G facilities
· Impose fees for both the direct and indirect costs of monitoring and inspections programs to address impacts and enforce local regulations
· Receive technical assistance from the COGCC
Staff has been negotiating a Regional Operator Agreement with Extraction Oil and Gas since last year, and through this process, a number of these protections have been incorporated into the current draft agreement. Staff additionally has received direction to update city regulations, and intends to achieve the following goals through such a code update:
· Utilize SB-181 authority to regulate locat...
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