If CPR News likes you, you'll get a sympathetic story. If not, well, you don't get much. Don't know much about methane intensity rules.
CPR News’ coverage disparity.
I guess if you're doing something that Colorado Public Radio News approves of, and a utility company steps on that, you're worthy of a giant profile article.
If you're just living your life on the Plains and don't want to have a utility company step all over your land, I guess CPR doesn't rate that as highly 'cause you might only get a toss-away few lines.
The article linked first below is that giant profile article about a Colorado Springs nonprofit who has land that will be impinged upon by the local utility.**
As you might imagine, having power lines cut across their land, their proposed nature park is not exactly what they want. They're right now negotiating as to the details of any proposed power lines, but the utility is tossing the words "eminent domain" out there just to make sure that we are all (probably park owners included) aware that they could do this. They don't want to, you understand. It's a last resort and all, but they're just going to put the words out there on the table for us all to note.
This is reminiscent of the state and Xcel's plan to do the same across the lands of people living out on the Plains. In fact, the rationale seems to be similar to me (if I understand the article about the case in the Springs correctly).
I've written plenty about the plans to push through giant, high power transmission lines to carry power from out here to the Front Range. This post isn't about that.
This post is about the GLARING disparity in the coverage CPR gives to one part of the State and not to the other.
If you do something that a reporter there sympathizes with, you get a splashy and sympathetic profile. Do something that they don't, you might get a brief mention at the end of an article. See the screenshot from a Feb 2022 article by a different CPR reporter (linked second below).
One wonders how this state would look and how policy would look if every part of it and every story therein were weighted equally by our mainstream media outlets.
**an important thing to note here is that Colorado Springs has its own utility and this utility is running the lines through the park down there while the lines going across the Eastern Plains will be the property of Xcel Energy. These are two separate entities, although they are running the lines for similar reasons.
https://www.cpr.org/2023/07/25/colorado-springs-nonprofit-fears-transmission-lines-would-jeopardize-community-park/
https://www.cpr.org/2022/02/25/colorado-regulators-approve-xcels-massive-new-transmissions-line-for-the-eastern-plains/
Colorado is the first in the country to regulate methane** emissions from oil and gas using what is called an "intensity" rule.
What this means is that companies will have to reduce their output of methane in direct proportion to their output of oil.
Skipping over a great deal of detail here, the program will work something like this:
If you own an oil company that produces 100 barrels of oil (or its equivalent), you'll have to reduce your methane output by 20%.
If I own an oil company that produces 50 barrels of oil, I'll have to reduce my methane output by 10%.
For operators that are tiny, using our numbers, say, someone that puts out 10 barrels of oil, the methane reduction is scaled differently, but I think you get the idea. The amount you must reduce your outgassing depends on how much oil you take to market.
This rule, this way of making oil and gas companies reduce methane output is about a year old. It's the result of a compromise and is a plan that the operators have signed off on; i.e. it's a plan that they agreed to.
The problem (and believe you me when I tell you that I heard chapter and verse about this while waiting to testify at the AQCC last week on the 19th), has been how environmentalists want this rule to be enforced.
The people there testifying and the environmentalist groups all called for essentially the same thing:
They want measurements to be made re. methane releases and they want audits to make sure the oil companies are actually reducing their output instead of estimates and modeling.
Additionally (and this was another big theme in testimony and also in articles I've read), environmentalists are worried about the rules being manipulated to the benefit of oil and gas companies.
Some of this one just has to expect. Are there shady operators out there? Yes. Do environmentalists want to regulate oil and gas out of business? Yes. Do businesses respond to incentives and regulation with a strategy to maximize their benefit? Yes.
What will be interesting to me will be to watch how these rules play out.
In the end, I think the likely outcome (given that I don't think regulators are willing to absolutely bring down the hammer) will be that the hardcore environmentalists who have looked at recent legislation as the fulfillment of all their earth-saving desires will find themselves as disappointed as they have been thus far.
Maybe at that point, they'll start agitating against the current Democrat leadership of this state, further breaking down the Democrat political machine.
Hey, a guy can hope can't he?
**To help give you some context, methane is basically natural gas and it is found in the same places that oil is. Methane is also a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. In other words, methane is better at reflecting heat back down at earth instead of letting it pass out into space.
https://coloradosun.com/2023/07/21/colorado-oil-and-gas-emissions-intensity-rule/