AIR SCARE

Oil and Gas Boom Raises Air Pollution Fears in West

By David Frey, 1-05-07

Throughout the West, states are becoming increasingly concerned that the growing oil and gas industry is impacting not only the land and water, but that it’s harming air quality.

The latest is Colorado, which last month passed new regulations requiring the industry to limit emissions from tanks of waste products, rumbling compressor stations and other sources. Colorado joins Wyoming and Montana, which have taken similar steps.

“It’s time,” says Mike Silverstein, deputy director of Air Pollution Control Division for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, “especially because they’re growing and becoming a significant source (of air pollution) in counties around the state.”

The state already had tougher air quality restrictions for the industry in the Denver area, mostly affecting the bustling oil fields in nearby Weld County. With Denver in danger of violating federal air quality standards, state officials tightened their focus on the industry, saying its impacts have far exceeded predictions.

The state’s new measures have drawn criticism, though, both from industry, which complains it will drive up costs, and from environmentalists who say they don't go far enough. The state came up with a two-tiered approach: one set of restrictions throughout most of the state, a tighter set for the Denver area, which was required by the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce ozone levels. Environmentalists and some landowners amid western Colorado’s booming natural gas fields, asked for tougher standards across the state.

“My home of 33 years is being systematically destroyed by an industry that couldn’t care less,” New Castle, Colo. resident Duke Cox, president of the Grand Valley Citizens Alliance, told state Air Quality Control commissioners as he appeared to squeeze back tears last month

Colorado’s new rules require a 75 percent reduction in emissions from over 5,000 condensate tanks near Denver that emit 20 tons of pollutants a year. It’s tougher than a compromise proposed by industry representatives, prompting Ken Wonstolen, general counsel for the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, to tell the Associated Press it was a “bitter surprise.”

A weaker rule statewide would require emissions controls on tanks that emit 20 tons of pollutants a year. The state estimates retrofitting compressor engines and condensate tanks with pollution controls would cost $21,000 to $35,000 per unit.

Jeremy Nichols, director of Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action, said he was disappointed the statewide rules didn’t go farther, but “on the whole, this is fantastic. Colorado has taken a huge step forward in terms of protecting clean air from gas development. It’s about time something like this happens, and it’s clearly a paradigm shift.”

The state isn’t the first to venture into this kind of regulation, though. Wyoming launched air quality controls in 1997, when a booming energy industry turned what had seemed like a minor emissions source into a growing air pollution problem. “In that sense, Wyoming is probably ahead of a lot of states,” says Bruce Pendery, program director for the Wyoming Outdoor Council. “That’s to its credit.”

The state began requiring emissions controls on sites that produce more than 40 tons of pollutants. In 2004, the state added new, tougher requirements in the booming Jonah Field, imposing controls on sites producing 20 tons. This year, tighter regulations will require controls on all well sites in the Jonah Field, and on sites producing 20 tons of emissions statewide.

“As you add more and more wells, the total amount of stuff from the field on the whole goes up and becomes a concern,” says David Finley, Wyoming’s Air Quality Division coordinator. “It’s been a very successful program. It is, I think, well-received by the oil and gas industry in Wyoming.”

Last year, Montana followed Wyoming’s lead, trying to stave off gas industry smog before it got out of control. “I don’t think we’re in danger yet of exceeding any ozone standards,” says Dave Klemp, air permitting program manager for Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality. It adopted new rules requiring well sites with over 25 tons of annual emissions to apply for permits and install emissions on tanks with over 15 tons of annual emissions.

New Mexico has taken no formal action, but it has formed a task force to study air quality in the Four Corners area, where wells and power plants are causing smog. Utah, where smog is heaviest along the urbanized Wasatch Front, is less concerned with gas activity than urban sources. “The oil and gas activity that’s going on is generally in the rural parts of the state, and we have not seen, at the moment, a huge impact from that,” says spokeswoman Donna Kemp Spangler.

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