In Colorado alone, 18,743 oil and gas wells are operating on public and private lands without any oversight. The inspections are required to protect engineers, nearby communities, safe operations, and proper disposal of toxic chemicals. Without these checks, anything can happen.
A new report from Earthworks, aptly named, “Breaking All the Rules” illustrates what some proponents of federal oversight on oil and gas drilling have already been saying: States are not prepared to oversee current extraction methods.
The report concludes that several states—including Colorado—have seen an increase in drilling revenue, but protections for communities and our water supply aren’t keeping pace with the shale boom.
[States] have increased their overall oil and gas agency budgets in response to increased drilling. Even with the budget increases, however, funding remains insufficient to provide for thorough and adequate inspections of oil and gas activities.
History has proven that a lack of inspectors could spell tragedy for Colorado. Many believe a critical shortage of inspectors contributed to 2010’s BP Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. That spill devastated industries, communities, and local tourism economies, as well as delicate wetlands. A similar spill could cripple Colorado’s tourism, agricultural, and outdoor industries, not to mention poisoning its already-overstressed water supply.
So learning that a shortage of inspectors in Colorado led to 40 percent of wells operating with no oversight doesn’t breed confidence in current state regulations.
Colorado, a state known for energy production, isn’t adequately protecting citizens or land against the dangers inherent to oil and gas drilling:
States across the nation are betraying one of the basic agreements between government and the governed: to enforce the law. That betrayal feeds into the growing lack of confidence that government should be about equal treatment and not about financial or political clout.
Oil and gas drilling that’s done outside of protections for water, air and land jeopardizes private citizens and endangers the protected public lands that so much of Colorado’s economy relies on. Regulations need to be stricter and more heavily enforced to properly safeguard western families.