Colorado Law Makers Looking to Ban Oil by 2030
“There is career-ending language in all of these bills”
Democratic legislators are preparing to introduce three bills that would make industry-redefining changes to the Colorado oil and gas sector, including a ban on new wells after 2030 and an essential shutdown of drilling activities for five months out of each year.
The sponsor of two of the three measures is Democratic Sen. Kevin Priola of Henderson. He told media outlets that there are major steps needed to “halt climate change” and to prevent what he fears could be a mass extinction of species if carbon production causes the planet to warm too much.
When asked about how such measures could impact a $48 billion industry that supports more than 300,000 Colorado jobs, Priola told The Sum & Substance that legislators’ duty is to consider public health and safety above the economy.
Oil-and-gas industry leaders, meanwhile, said that the more appropriate extinction to be discussing is what could happen to their sector if it must cut back operations so severely, as well as to individual and tax revenue it generates for state residents and governments. The quick cessation of production, coming as oil and gas is needed still for everything from home heating to transportation, would require Colorado to import energy from other states or countries, a process that would generate emissions that proponents claim to be cutting, they said.
“There is career-ending language in all of these bills,” said Kait Schwartz, director of American Petroleum Institute Colorado, referring to the many workers likely to lose jobs in the sector if some or all the proposals are signed into law. “I think this is one of the first times they have been blatant enough to use the words ‘phase-out’ or ‘ban.’”
According to TSS Colorado, Priola did not shy away from that but said that as a term-limited legislator in his final year of service, he wants to pass laws that will protect state residents well after he is out of office. Scientists and policymakers elsewhere in the world have been pushing for a phase-out of fossil fuels, and the native Coloradan has found himself coughing more often and realizing that winters are becoming shorter, pushing him to take bold action.
“Things aren’t the way they have been historically. And what I think most people who don’t drill down into the science of climate don’t realize is that even if tomorrow you stop putting carbon into the atmosphere, the temperature will continue to go up,” he said. “So where policy makers, in my opinion, come into play is: What can we do to minimize that?”
The most significant of the three bills, to be sponsored by Priola and Democratic Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis of Longmont, would bar the state from issuing new permits for oil and gas wells after Jan. 1, 2030, and require permitted wells to break ground by the end of 2032. While existing wells could continue to be plumbed, companies could not increase production by modifying old wells after 2030 as well, and reductions would be prioritized in disproportionately impacted communities.
A second, wider-ranging bill from Priola and Democratic Sen. Lisa Cutter of Morrison, would seek to reduce air pollution in a variety of ways, including:
Pausing oil-and-gas fracking and production activities in the high-ozone season of May through September unless drillers use electric equipment that now is in limited supply;
Codifying Gov. Jared Polis’ executive order to reduce nitrous oxide emissions — a precursor to ozone pollution — from wells 50% versus 2017 totals by 2030;
Directing the Colorado Department of Transportation by 2025 to establish a program to reduce vehicle miles traveled, which Priola said would have to go beyond the previously failed efforts just to cut single-occupancy-vehicle trips to large employment sites;
Creating new rules to limit emissions from indirect sources like warehouses and retail centers that attract a lot of gas-burning vehicles; and,
Requiring all new vehicles sold in Colorado by 2035 to be zero-emissions cars and trucks.
Finally, a third bill from Democratic Reps. Jennifer Bacon of Denver and Jenny Willford of Northglenn would seek to put into place some of the ozone-reducing ideas discussed during the 2023 off-season by an interim committee set up to examine the subject.
An outline of the bill shows it would treat all wells in a location, including their pre-production activities, as one aggregated source of emissions for permitting consideration — a change environmental groups have said would reclassify those areas as major sources of emissions and subject them to higher regulation. However, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment Executive Director Jill Hunsaker Ryan told a joint meeting of legislative energy committees on Jan. 17 that she didn’t think it would bump the areas up from minor-source status.
That bill also would create new requirements for minor sources to get air-quality permits in the designated ozone-nonattainment area stretching along the northern Front Range, including a mandate that they take as many emissions offline as they create. And it would require that oil and gas operators obtain an air-quality permit from the Air Pollution Control Division before the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission decides whether to issue them operating permits.
Willford declined to comment on her bill, saying that she wants to wait until it is introduced to discuss it. However, Priola said that he is aware of that effort and believes it can be passed along with his plans rather than be seen as a competitor bill.
The new trio of bills, which are expected to be introduced over the next month, come in addition to a rumored bill that seeks to end the tax exemption on stripper wells, the lower-producing wells that many companies operate years into a drilling site’s life. And they come in addition to a bill that CDPHE leaders have said they plan to introduce that would give local communities more opportunities to veto any drilling site or emissions-producing factory that could boost pollution and that would lead to new regulations on oil refineries.
It’s unknown yet where Polis will stand on any of the proposals. But during debate last year on House Bill 1294 — the bill that created the ozone study committee — officials from the Polis administration said that imposition of many of the proposed new air-quality-permitting regulations would slow the state’s existing efforts to cut air pollution.
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Thanks for the heads up. We are running out of feet to shoot ourselves in.
For the methanol economy,perhaps?
Much cheaper to just crack of one hydrogen atom from methane than 3.