Spills Per Year, 2017–2025

Colorado reported 338 oil and gas spills in 2025, a decrease from 378 in 2024. Spill counts have fluctuated year to year without a clear long-term trend. The state has recorded 3,642 spills since 2017. This does not include historical spills. Adding in historical spills brings this number to 9,622.

Total Volume Spilled Per Year (Gallons), 2017–2025

There’s no clear trend in the amount of liquid companies report having spilled annually over the past several years. 2019 saw the highest reported volume at 2.33 million gallons, followed by a spike to 1.46 million gallons in 2022. After a sharp drop in 2024, the amount of liquid reported spilled increased in 2025, driven largely by a single large spill from QB Energy Operating in the Piceance Basin.

Note: Volume figures are minimums based on operator self-reporting. Many spills list an unknown volume.

Spills by Operator, 2025

The top five operators accounted for almost half of all spills reported in 2025. QB Energy Operating, formed in 2024 to acquire Caerus Oil and Gas assets in the Piceance Basin, led all operators with 46 spills. TEP Rocky Mountain, formerly Terra Energy Partners, saw a 1,400 percent increase from just one spill in 2024.

Spills by County, 2025

Around half of all spills occurred in Weld County, located within the Denver-Julesburg Basin. Garfield County in the Piceance Basin saw the second most spills. Spills occurred in 21 of Colorado’s 64 counties.

Spills by Surface Owner, 2025

81 percent of spills occurred on private land, reflecting the fact that the Denver-Julesburg Basin primarily underlies private land. 10 percent occurred on federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management or U.S. Forest Service.

Volume Spilled by Fluid Type, 2025 (Gallons)

Produced water made up 86 percent of the total 794,472 gallons reported. Other E&P waste—a category that includes brine, scale, and miscellaneous oilfield fluids—accounted for just seven percent. Oil and condensate together made up another seven percent, consistent with the Denver-Julesburg Basin’s high water-to-oil production ratio.

Distance to Sensitive Resources, 2025

Almost 80 percent of spills reported included their distance from surface water, another 83 percent reported distance from water wells, and around 60 percent reported distance from occupied buildings.

Note: These figures reflect only spills that reported a proximity measurement. Where multiple distance values exist for a single spill, the closest distance is used.

Volume Spilled by Operator: 2024 vs. 2025 (Gallons)

TEP Rocky Mountain reported a more than 15-fold increase in total volume spilled year-over-year. Scout Energy Management spilled roughly 60 percent less in 2025 than 2024, after spilling the most of any company in 2024. QB Energy, formed in 2024 to acquire Caerus Oil and Gas assets, reported 445,284 gallons spilled but is not shown here as it had no full-year 2024 baseline.

Biggest Volume Changes by Operator, 2024–2025 (Gallons)

TEP Rocky Mountain led all operators in volume increase at +63,084 gallons. Scout Energy Management recorded the largest decrease at -98,448 gallons, having been the largest spiller in 2024.

Regulatory oversight. Colorado’s oil and gas spill program is administered by the Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC), the state agency formerly known as the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC). The agency was renamed in 2023 under Senate Bill 23-285. The earlier Senate Bill 19-181 (2019) had redirected the agency’s mission to prioritize public health, safety, welfare, and the environment alongside resource development.

What must be reported. ECMC Rule 912 requires operators to report any spill or release of E&P waste or produced fluids that meets at least one of the following thresholds: any release that threatens waters of the state, a public water system, a residence or occupied structure, livestock, wildlife, or a public road; any release of one barrel or more outside of secondary containment; or any release of five barrels or more regardless of containment. The five-barrel threshold means that minor, fully contained spills still require formal reporting. Spill counts across the three states in this report are not directly comparable: Colorado’s one-barrel outside-containment trigger is lower than New Mexico’s five-barrel flat threshold and Wyoming’s ten-barrel verbal notification requirement, reflecting meaningful differences in how each state defines a reportable incident.

Reporting timeline. Operators must submit an initial notification within 24 hours of discovery, verbally, by email, or via Form 19. If the initial notification was not filed on Form 19, a Form 19 Initial must follow within 72 hours. A Form 19 Supplemental is required within 10 days of discovery.

Recent regulatory changes. In October 2024, ECMC adopted the Cumulative Impacts and Enhanced Systems and Practices Rules, which took effect December 15, 2024. Those rules expand requirements for operators to assess and mitigate cumulative environmental impacts near communities but do not materially change the spill reporting thresholds described above.

Enforcement. ECMC’s Compliance Specialists conduct on-site inspections of oil and gas locations statewide; every well in Colorado is on an inspection schedule. When non-compliance is identified, ECMC may pursue voluntary correction through outreach or warning letters, or escalate to a formal Notice of Alleged Violation (NOAV). More serious violations are referred to the ECMC Enforcement Unit, which calculates penalties that are then adjudicated by the Commission. SB 19-181 strengthened the Commission’s enforcement authority and directed it to prioritize public health and environmental outcomes in penalty determinations.

Data source: Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC), formerly COGCC, renamed in 2023. Data downloaded from the ECMC online spill database.

Record selection: Filtered to rows where Spill Type = “Recent” and Date of Discovery falls between January 1 and December 31, 2025. Each unique Tracking # is counted as one spill event; where multiple rows share a Tracking #, the first occurrence is used for categorical fields (operator, county, facility type, surface owner).

Historical comparisons: Annual spill count and volume charts begin in 2017, the first year for which ECMC provides a complete dataset. The 2016 data available for download covers only the second half of the year and is therefore excluded. These are not the “historical spills” found during decommissioning of drilling equipment but rather the number of regular spills reported to the state each year, going back to 2017.

Volume: ECMC records volume across six liquid columns (Oil, Condensate, Produced Water, Drilling Fluid, Flow Back Fluid, and Other E&P Waste BBLs Spilled). For each Tracking #, the maximum reported value per column is taken across all associated rows (to avoid double-counting supplemental filings), then all six column maxima are summed and multiplied by 42 to convert barrels to gallons. Volume figures are minimums based on operator self-reporting; a substantial share of spills list unknown volume.

Distance to sensitive resources: ECMC records the distance in feet from the spill site to the nearest surface water body, water well, and occupied building. For each spill, the minimum reported distance across all rows is used. Only spills reporting a non-zero distance of 5,280 feet (one mile) or less are included. Results are bucketed into six 500-foot ranges.

Inorganic-only filings: This analysis includes all Form 19 filings meeting the date and spill-type criteria. It does not filter out filings where detected contamination consists solely of inorganic parameters — such as pH, sodium adsorption ratio (SAR), electrical conductivity, or arsenic — that may reflect naturally occurring soil chemistry rather than a hydrocarbon release. ECMC does not provide a formal flag for these cases; the determination appears, when made, only in free-text supplemental report fields. These filings represent less than 0.5 percent of the 2025 recent record and have no material effect on any figure in this report.