Tag: SB24-229

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice An oil company’s $7M cleanup plan became the state’s excuse to shut it down. Jeffrey Kauffman stood at the edge of an excavation site—not to check production, but to explain why there wasn’t any. There was no rig, no flaring, no signs of oil moving to market. Just a fenced-off hole in the earth—and a state agency that wouldn’t let them fill it back in. “This one’s cost between $200,000 and $300,000,” said Kauffman, who serves as KPK’s Chief Operating Officer. “We submitted clean soil results months ago. Still no approval to close it.” The site is one of roughly a dozen that KPK has excavated under orders from the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC). Some holes have remained open since early 2024. This one, the s...