LaPlata County meeting March 12 - Fracking moratorium?

Seems to me this message I received deserves it's own thread:

Carol Cure said...

March 12 at 10:00 a.m. is the La Plata County Commissioners' next meeting at which they will discuss a possible moratorium on fracking. 

It appears from reporting in the Durango Herald that Gwen Lachelt might be leaning toward such a ban, but that Bobby Lieb and Julie Westendorff are not at all convinced. 

I would urge everyone who cares about our county's environment and our health and safety to attend this meeting and express your views.

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Further local developments. . .

The Durango Herald

Friday, January 25, 2013 

http://www.durangoherald.com/article/20130125/NEWS02/130129723/0/News/Hickenlooper-proposes-new-fracking-study

DENVER – Colorado should use unanticipated tax money to study the effects of gas and oil drilling on air quality, as well as devote more money to public schools and wildfire prevention, Gov. John Hickenlooper told lawmakers Friday.

The governor’s late-afternoon request outlined his vision for spending about $50 million in additional tax collections that his office didn’t anticipate when it made its formal request to legislative budget-writers in November. 

Hickenlooper’s $50 million request includes about $1 million to study the drilling practice known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The Democratic governor insists the procedure is safe, but skeptics remain. . .

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The Durango Herald

Article published Feb 20, 2013
County looks at shale-oil timeout
Moratorium would allow study of heavy water fracking

By Emery Cowan Herald staff writer

http://durangoherald.com/article/20130220/NEWS01/130229965/Commission-ponders-shale-oil-moratorium

Faced with the possibility that La Plata County could see shale-oil-well development for the first time in the coming year, county commissioners explored the possibility of enacting a moratorium on the practice during a work session Wednesday.

Commissioners brought up the possibility of a moratorium on shale-oil-well development after Houston-based Swift Energy Resources filed two applications with the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to drill two exploratory horizontal wells in western La Plata County.

Swift’s target is the oil- and gas-rich Niobrara Formation, known in La Plata County as the Mancos Shale Formation.

Aided by technologies such as horizontal drilling and multistage hydraulic fracturing, energy companies have unlocked millions of barrels of oil from the Niobrara Formation on the Front Range, and now drillers are looking to tap it in other locations.

A moratorium on shale-oil-well development would allow the county to investigate the potential impacts of this type of development, which has never happened before in the county.

The majority of the more than 3,000 wells that dot the county are coal-bed methane wells.

Shale-oil wells extend much farther laterally and are fracked multiple times, requiring much more water than coal-bed methane wells.

Coal-bed methane wells completed in 2011, for example, required between 200,000 and 250,000 gallons of water, while the drilling and completion process for horizontal shale-oil wells require more than 4 million gallons.

Shale-oil-well pad sites are about three times larger than those of coal-bed methane wells to accommodate the massive amounts of water, sand and other materials needed to frack the wells.

All of this could have significant implications for the county from a land-use perspective, Deputy County Attorney Todd Weaver wrote in a memorandum to the county commissioners Wednesday. . . 

http://www.sanjuancitizens.org/zapn-manager/uploads/docs/In_the_News/2013_2-13_County_looks_at_shale-oil_timeout-DurangoHerald.pdf 

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Further misc. sources


FRACKING IS SPREADING IN COLORADO
http://www.savecoloradofromfracking.org/basics/index.html


FRACKING COLORADO (just another wordpress.com site)
http://frackingcolorado.wordpress.com/news-amp-photos/


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