Those energy regs

Latest draft a big improvement, but still some way to go

Rocky Mountain News

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Much improved. That's our first reaction to Colorado's draft rules for energy development that regulators released Monday.

Six weeks ago we dubbed the proposed rules, as then written, "the red-tape initiative." They appeared so onerous in some specifics that cynics could be forgiven for wondering about their true purpose.

Were they designed, as advertised, to strike a fairer balance between energy production and environmental protection? Or were they actually meant to roll back oil and gas production by imposing a thicket of regulations that would be costly and time-consuming to meet?

Fortunately, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and other agencies involved in writing the rules have listened to critics - up to a point. And while Monday's draft still goes further than it should in spots, the overall compliance burden should be less than originally envisioned.

When we first wrote about the rules, for example, they included a provision giving adjacent landowners standing to intervene if they objected to a drilling plan on a neighbor's property. Talk about an invitation to obstruction! Under the new version, adjacent landowners will be notified of all drilling plans and provided 30 days to comment, but their objection would not trigger a hearing.

State officials have also pruned the initial paperwork requirements to process a drilling application (although not as much as they could have) and tried to address concerns that the approval process will drag on for many months without resolution. The suggested approval deadlines now may add little or no time to most applications. And if no action has been taken after 75 days, the applicant can appeal for a hearing at the commission itself.

Meanwhle, we're glad the proposed rules would reduce the odor of drilling operations, regulate waste pits and require producers to maintain an inventory of chemicals they use and provide it to regulators upon request - to cite just three of a number of positive measures.

Yet, as responsive as state officials have been, we remain concerned that the overall effect of the rules may be to unnecessarily suppress energy production - which is a huge boon both to this state and nation. The rules imposing drilling "timeouts" to protect wildlife habitat, for example, while less extensive than in the original draft, still threaten major cutbacks given the possibility of as many as three months of dead time in much of the Piceance Basin. Regulators have proposed ways for producers to avoid these timeouts - by limiting the number of drilling pads per square mile, for example - but it remains to be seen how they work in practice.

Fortunately, the draft rules are just that: a draft. Further revisions are possible in the coming months as specialists outside the state agencies take a closer look and release their own assessments. We hope that regulators continue to be responsive to legitimate concerns.