By Ed Sealover | The Sum & Substance
Colorado air-quality regulators on Friday approved the state’s first emissions-reduction rules for the midstream sector of the oil-and-gas industry — rules that officials acknowledged will be expensive to comply with but said are necessary to curb pollution.
During a two-day hearing, energy companies warned that the 20.5% reduction in emissions versus 2015 levels come at too high a price — an estimated $86.3 million per year in sector-wide compliance costs that would rise if the sector experienced significant growth. Meanwhile, environmental groups argued that the rules fell short of achieving the emissions cuts called for in the state’s Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Roadmap and don’t guarantee substantial help for disproportionately impacted communities.
In the end, the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission made only small changes from the Air Pollution Control Division proposal that had seemed to rankle both sides in the debate. Instead, they approved a hard cap on the emissions coming from the sector, kept in place a credit-trading program supported by business but hated by environmentalists and ignored requests to exempt remote Western Slope operations from the regulations.