Colorado’s energy companies are facing a
deadline today to report to the state the results of inspections on oil
and gas wells statewide — and the location of pipelines associated with
wells within 1,000 feet of buildings.
The
inspections have been a massive undertaking in a short timeline, since
the order covers all of the more than 54,000 active wells in Colorado.
The inspection order was issued by Gov. John Hickenlooper and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission
(COGCC) on May 2, shortly after local Firestone fire officials
announced they had linked a fatal April 17 home explosion to raw natural
gas leaking through a small, abandoned one-inch flow line that was
found still attached to an oil and gas well about 178 feet from the
house at 6312 Twilight Ave.
Homeowner Mark Martinez, 42, was killed in the disaster in Firestone’s Oak Meadows neighborhood, as was his wife Erin’s brother, Joseph William “Joey” Irwin III, also 42, of Frederick. Erin Martinez
also was critically injured in the blast, and their 11-year-old son,
who was injured, was treated and released from a hospital. The couple’s
daughter was not at home at the time.
The
well had a series of owners, and since 2014 had been owned and operated
by Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: APC). The Texas company, one of
Colorado’s biggest energy companies, said last week it would shut down
the three wells it operates in the Oak Meadows subdivision and sever the
one-inch flow lines at all of its more than 3,000 vertical wells in the
state.
The
state’s first deadline for inspections of oil and gas wells across
Colorado was Tuesday, May 30, a second deadline for additional work is
June 30.
Michael Edwards,
the senior director for investor relations with Denver’s PDC Energy
Inc. (NASDAQ: PDCE), one of the five biggest oil and gas companies
working in the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin north and east of Denver,
said Tuesday that the company met the May 30 deadline for inspections
and filed its report with the COGCC on Saturday, May 27.
