The Greeley Tribune runs a regular column entitled the Weld County Oil and Gas Spill Report that provides a handy break-down of the spills and other “releases” reported in Colorado’s most drilled, most fracked county. A pretty typical spill summary might read:
KERR MCGEE OIL & GAS ONSHORE LP, reported March 6 a tank battery spill west of Platteville, about 1,250 feet west of Buck Rake Boulevard and Rodgers Circuit. Less than five barrels of oil, condensate and produced water spilled. Waters of the state were impacted. The separator cabinet at the production facility developed a leak. A groundwater sample from 8 feet below ground surface indicated benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene concentrations above COGCC standards. -Greely Tribune: Weld County oil and gas spill report for March 17
It is a useful feature, and worth checking regularly. But it didn’t capture what’s going on a few counties west, up in Jackson County. Apparently for that its up to individuals to check the state’s databases, since most counties and communities–even those being actively drilled–are not served by such diligent reporting.
Of course media following the oil and gas beat in Colorado have been busy covering SB 181–the pubic health and safety/oil and gas reform bill. Which means covering the Capitol circus–Democratic leader using machines to a read bill, a Republican senator talk of secession. But meanwhile the wildcatters and frackers, the big boys and the ‘moms and pops’ are still busy.
Even if drilling is down a bit, along with the price of fracked gas glutted at the hub. Leasing and permitting still continues apace–locking up the public’s lands in speculative chains, raising uncertainty in neighborhoods and for nearby towns and ranchers–all without much say by local jurisdictions about when, how, and where such activity should occur.
Which is to say that business still gets done–even if some workers get a paid day off to spill into the capitol instead. Consider North Park, for instance. There an Oklahoma company is getting called out by the state oil and gas commission, the “COGCC,” for the number of “reportable” incidents–also called “spills and releases”–in its operations there.
This incident is the 11th reportable Spill since January 2, 2019. With the 10-day Supplemental F-19, provide SandRidge’s operating plan to prevent this incidents going forward. The plan shall include at a minimum:
Detail description(s) of ALL activities and field operations SandRidge currently has ongoing in North Park;
Details of root causes of ALL reportable spills SandRidge has had in North Park since January 1, 2019; and
Details in how SandRidge is managing and providing oversight of all their subcontractors in North Park.
Since the spill that triggered the response, initially reported on March 8, the same operator has reported a twelfth spill, also in North Park:
At 1000 this morning (3/14/2019) flowback crews found an approximately 10 to 15 bbl spill of flowback water on the SU 9 pad. The crews had shut down the site on 3/13/2019 and given escort off-site back to Walden due to severe snowstorm. When they arrived back on-site today they found that two frac tanks storing flowback water had failed valves. The valves slowly leaked out flowback water onto the pad. Frac tanks had earthen berms constructed around them so no fluid left the secondary containment area and no fluid left the pad site. However, the area under the tanks are not lined.
But you may have missed all this spilling going on. I did until a link came across my Twitter feed.
Buying influence has long been a go-to strategy, coupled with spreading crazy promises and threatening exaggerated calamity. But the sheen may be wearing thin as oil and gas reform bill moves through the Colorado State Legislature.
Now the Colorado media has done good work covering SB-181, which would reform the COGCC, and clarify that its mission is to serve the public’s interest and not to foster private gain; would strengthen forced-pooling protections and due process; and, would allow local jurisdictions to exercise what would otherwise be typical authorities (except, currently, for oil and gas).
But the media has also given lots of coverage to push questionable and exaggerated claims from industry, and to highlight high profile critics–even those pumping obvious op-ed oil for industry, sometimes without disclosing those ties.
So, in the drama and the back-and-forth at the Capitol, it is still Coloradans getting fracked. Amid the industry wailing and gnashing of teeth, the spilling and drilling that brought us all to this point continues.
And that is the issue, the matter at hand. That is why no bottomless PR budget or deep-pocketed astroturf will drive it away.
Coloradans are being harmed under the current oil and gas regime. Take what just happened near Broomfield, right in the midst of the SB-181 debate. That legislation would reform Colorado’s antiquated “forced pooling” laws, among the very weakest in the nation. But for now, without that protection, this:
Regulators OK Broomfield forced pooling request
DENVER — The Colorado Oil and Gas Commission voted Tuesday to approve a measure that moves forward plans by Denver-based Extraction Oil and Gas to drill in Broomfield despite protests from residents who live near the proposed drill site in the city’s Wildgrass subdivision. –BizWest
And over in Battlement Mesa, on the Western Slope residents aren’t giving up despite what they feel is rote approval by the current COGCC, seen by many there as a rubber-stamp agency.
‘Colorado Dream’ Residents File Suit to Halt Fracking Site
DENVER (CN) – Residents of a town nicknamed “the Colorado Dream” sued the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in state court in Denver Thursday for approving a drilling permit that they claim threatens the “idyllic community.”
Filed by Battlement Concerned Citizens and the Grand Valley Citizens Alliance, the lawsuit scrutinizes the commission’s approval of Ursa Operating Company’s most recent proposal to frack, or hydraulic fracture, and drill 24 oil and gas wells in an area already dense with mineral development.
Garfield County residents have fought against fracking impacts, risks, and intrusions for over a decade.
From one side of the Rockies to the other, local communities and local denizens of the gaspatch are saying “Enough.” SB-181 has been a long time coming.
The battle for Battlement has been waged over “unconventional” oil and gas development for ten years longer than on the Front Range.
There in the late 90s and early 00s, fracking techniques and horizontal drilling were pioneered in the Piceance basin’s tight sands formations.
Engineering technologies that have been developed in the
Piceance basin include Multi-Zone Stimulation Technology
and the Just-In-Time Perforation system. These two technologies work in conjunction during the well-bore stimulation process and enable completion of up to 50 gasbearing intervals in one well. Well-bore stimulation technology begins at the base of a well and moves upward, sequentially fracturing and stimulating up to 10 zones… -Houston Geological Society Bulletin, 2010
In the Piceance basin people, streams, and wells were polluted years ago, when fracking up the Front Range was still mostly a sparkle in some executive’s eye. So SB-181 ought not catch anyone by surprise.
After I was alerted by my Twitter feed, I looked into the North Park incidents some more. North Park is a lovely place, north and west of Rocky Mountain National Park. It comprises the headwaters of the North Platte River, beautiful and peaceful, with place names like Willow Creek and lots of moose and other wildlife.
Moose are among the many species of wildlife thriving in Colorado’s North Park, where expanding, and perhaps reckless, oil and gas development could harm habitat.
Away from the Front Range, and the neighborhoods at Battlement Mesa, forgotten places like North Park are also why Colorado needs oil and gas reform. North Park is exactly the type of place the State of Colorado should be considering carefully for its other values and critical resources, before it hands out drilling permits.
One thing SB-181 does is add a new wildlife expert on the COGCC, the state agency responsible for regulating oil and gas in Colorado. For North Park this could not come too soon.
Considering all this, it is disingenuous for industry to pretend SB-181 is just about servicing Boulder (Radical!). Or that it is somehow–despite being completely different policy–really just Proposition 112 reborn (Sneaky!). COGCC reform is a long time coming. The need and public demand for it run deep, and SB-181 is a reasonable response.
SB-181 is about communities and neighborhoods tired of being told that their future is to be fracked, regardless of their own ideas on the subject. This is about property owners standing up for their rights and what they own. It is about government closest to the people being able to promote common sense practices that put priority on the health and safety of residents. SB-181 is about Coloradans sick, literally, of putting their children and family’s health at risk to benefit a private industry, one that is perfectly able to follow stronger rules and regulations.
So as the drilling and spilling continues, as industry’s arrogance of entitlement steam-rolls over the property and rights of others; as its defenders play their auto-replies, that economy activity will slam to a halt with any public interest based regulation–And why do we hate workers and America?
With claims that better community protections will force us all to freeze in the dark, eating our last meal of raw hamburger as it spoils in the warm fridge; they should also be aware. Coloradans are acting to put public health, safety, and a clean environment first. Its time and SB-181 should rightfully become law.
58 thoughts on “Spilling & Drilling Through SB-181 Debate”
Good diary, Pete. Even the alternative rock station (KBCO) is playing nonstop industry talking points (voters rejected 112, so clearly no need for safety or oversight, 181 will kill millions of jobs, etc). So it helps to have at least some clear-headed pushback.
But, KBCO is a Clear Channel station. So no surprise there. And the music they play is a corporate version of what some accountant thinks is alternative.
The production guys over in these parts are busy every night. The drilling rigs are still mostly absent here. We see a couple between Debeque and Rifle. The red army is rolling every night, however, bringing capped wells on line and refracking others…expanding compressor stations and such. The Halliburton trucks seem to be ever present.
I suspect the production increase may be in order to fulfill supply contracts. I can't imagine it is to take advantage of high prices.
Or…maybe, they just know what is about to happen to them. The people of Colorado have had enough of the Fossilonian s. House bills 1341, 1265, and 1298, passed in 2009, I think, had the same, or similar, intentions as this current bill. Sometimes I wonder how far along we would have come without the treachery of Gov. Frackenlooper.
Now it seems we are on the verge of returning to the promise of what Harris Sherman called, "a fundamental shift in the balance of power between the oil and gas industry and the people of Colorado"
If the Democrats, more specifically Governor Polis, are willing to stick to their positions and withstand the political onslaught from the Oily Boys, we may someday see an O&G industry that operates fairly and honestly in Colorado.
Got to fleece those investors suckers while they can:
An Industry Built on Debt
Roughly a decade after McClendon’s rise, the Wall Street Journal reported that “energy companies [since 2007] have spent $280 billion more than they generated from operations on shale investments, according to advisory firm Evercore ISI.
Exactly. Hype aside, this is an industry that is trying to suck out all the profits while they still can, get investors to invest in spite of poor returns, and get consumers to absorb the social costs, as always.
It is "an industry built on debt", and like Trump, there are limits to borrowing more money to pay off the borrowed money. It's why my pension fund loses money – they haven't divested from fossil fuels.
“You mean, we can: trash the global environment, pollute the air, poison the groundwater, endanger the lives and health and homes of workers and nearby residents, . . .
. . . AND finance this all with humongous debt in a ponzi scheme that we can never repay, wiping out the retirement savings and pensions of millions, and likely creating the next great financial panic catastrophe??!!??
The model is only profitable because it is exploitative–of natural resources, of communities, of capital. Accountability is what this industry most fears–for its true costs, for its impacts, for its fundamentals.
O.K., I've read a lot about this subject, now it is time to ask questions.
The oil industry oppose 181, sent employees to demonstrate, etc., they claim 1000's of jobs will go away if this bill passes.
Question: Of all the oil company employees working in Colorado —- exactly how many of those employees are actually Colorado citizens? I mean really live here, vote here, pay the normal property taxes, so on and so forth. Or are they fly-in types just to work the equipment, and send the paycheck to other parts of the country?
I ask this question, (yes, badly), because a few years ago, I used to drive a truck and delivered equipment all over Colorado to drill sites. Many of those employees of the oil companies I spoke with had so thick East Texas/Louisiana Cajun accents that I had trouble understanding many of them.
There are about 26,000 direct jobs in the oil and gas industry as of 2018, per the Colorado Bureau of Labor. I would guess that the majority of those salaried jobs are Coloradans, although not necessarily from the locality they’re drilling in. Oil and gas workers move to where the jobs are. (As Duke wrote)
Then there are temp hourly jobs in welding, driving and hauling, and general labor. Anecdotally, I can state that about half of those jobs are immigrant labor – semiskilled young men who are recruited precisely because they are not citizens, do not speak English well, and so are easily exploited. Several of my young male Latino students go into the industry that way. Every year, some of these young men are injured or blown up with very little follow up by media and crocodile tears from the industry.
To know the truth about this, we’d have to rely on these companies to tell the truth. I think you know how that would turn out. Colorado BLS does have a wealth of demographic info on each industry, and its possible that you could tease out state residency. I’m on an iPad, so hard to get links, but I’ve posted them here before.
The industry's new Price Waterhouse study cites 232,900 oil and gas jobs in Colorado, with average total compensation of $101,000 and total impact of $31.6 billion.
"Natural gas and oil activity support a wide-array of jobs. They include everything from petroleum engineers, environmental experts and rig hands to truck drivers, caterers and contractors that benefit from the industry’s economic activity"
So, V is quoting 4 year old data, and lumping in everything the industry claims as Direct, Indirect, and Induced impact to make his “232,900 Oil and Gas jobs” claim. I sure wouldn’t mind one of those $101,000/year catering jobs.
Facts is facts , Curmy, including the well-established multiplier effect. I'm sure you prefer it when MJ just blows a figure out her ass and rants about illegal aliens, Trump style.
VG: multiplier effects are easy to play with. I remember a study in the livestock grazing industry some years ago that tried to claim that small, rural, towns in the West were dependent on the grazing industry for economic viabiility. The actual truth was the opposite because ranchers depended on those small towns for second jobs.
Same has held true for off-road vehicle recreation. Those studies also played with multipliers to enhance the value of the industry in the Colorado economy.
Without reviewing the quoted studies, I’ll offer that the number of actual created jobs in the O & G industry is far closer to the figure quoted by MJ. Another useful reference is County Business Patterns for the State of Colorado, published periodically by the US Dept. of Labor.
That's true, but it doesn't mean such effects don'texist. MJ pretends every penny earned by an oil and gas worker is buried in their back yard and not recycled through the local economy. That's just a stupid assumption.
As to Curmy, our local Alzheimer/weisenheimer can't even do first grade arirthmetic. He claims the study is four years old. But it reports activity throughout 2015, which even if you compiled it on New Year's day 2016 would make it just three years old. Or did I misss that this is still 2019?
Sure, it is…and the interpretation is all O&G bullshit, that you gladly regurgitate like a good little acolyte. But you keep pretending it's not hilariously skewed and misleading.
Actually, I keep pretending you're dumb!
Wow, you do tend to regress when you're cornered, don't you?
The less you have, the nastier you get, V. That's been true for a long time. Clearly, the only thing you have right now is a self-serving study put out by the American Petroleum Institute.
It's a busy day for me, so I'll just post these stats, not out of my ass, but from the nonpartisan Colorado Department of Labor, which tracks actual jobs in actual industries in Colorado….again.
———–
There are not over 50,000 jobs in extraction. Nor 112,000 as Hick claimed, nor 250,000 as COGCC claimed.
Last year, in 2018, there were about 26,000 jobs in Colorado directly related to oil and gas exraction. See for yourself. Go to Colorado Dept. of Labor and Employment, Labor Market Information, Occupational analysis and look up "extraction". Oil and gas extraction is part of the Mining, Logging, and Construction sector, but most of that is building construction.
A search with keyword "oil" turns up other occupations, such as rotary drillhead operator. That one only had 179 annual openings.
Support workers for mining operations is only .6% (that's .06 for the math impaired)of all jobs in Colorado now, not the huge sector COGCC likes to brag on. Oil and gas extraction as a whole comprises about 3% of all jobs in Colorado.
As many people exit as are coming into oil work, and the overall trend is down. The salaries of most people on the ground are nowhere near that $80K figure often cited. It's a profitable business for the CEOs, surely, and probably for the top execs and engineers and lobbyists. But not for the roughnecks freezing their asses off and risking getting blown up every day. Those guys are getting from about $37- 55K a year.
Always check your stats at the source.
As for the multiplier effects, with oil and gas direct jobs being 3% of the Colorado GDP, those "multiplier jobs" would be proportionally small.
This report is from Leafly’s Cannabis Jobs Report (2019), which tracks cannabis-related job growth all over the US, and state by state. The Bureau of Labor Statistics still doesn’t track cannabis jobs, and won’t until 2022, when an official cannabis jobs classification will be added.
So those jobs, too, have "multiplier effects", although V will argue that somehow oil and gas jobs have greater multipliers. My own experience contradicts this; I can look out my classroom window and see dozens of construction workers working on a new school building. Their salaries are ~ 20% paid by the BEST grant, which was partly funded by the 15% sales tax on cannabis products.
Colorado employs about 3 million people. Gas and Oil direct jobs employ about 26,000 people. So even if oil and gas has a uniquely productive multiplier effect, more than construction, manufacturing, or agriculture, that is still a small sector (~3%) of the Colorado economy.
I just have to chuckle at you chiding anyone for implicit bias prior to investigation. You keep on hugging that API oil industry study, V….and ignoring what the bureaucrats at the Bureau of Labor Stats have to say.
You asked about a prior study. I can dig up two Leeds business studies on oil and gas jobs from 2014-2015. One was funded by COGA and the American Petroleum Institute – the same corporate authority you cite. It attempted to scare people about the "total fracking ban" which nobody was promoting in any ballot initiative at the time, although there were several setbacks and local control initiatives circulating.
Unsurprisingly, that study was and is still the source for the 215,000 jobs figure, which included your magical mystical 10X induced job multiplier.
Leeds school of business puts out a study on economic impacts of oil and gas every year. In 2014, the authors found about 33,000 direct jobs. That was before they started inflating the numbers with the "induced" and "indirect" nonsense. They also cite the Bureau of Labor Statistics as their source for data – which is the same source you accuse me of "pulling out of my ass", which sounds uncomfortable to say the least.
We all know by now that when you have no facts and no data, you start throwing insults. It makes you look mean and ridiculous, but hey, you do you.
Yeah, well, Vicki Marble recently cited that same number (give, or take, a billion maybe) . . ,
I have no issue with making a profit. I have an issue with your knowingly using deceptive figures to make your case. But you keep on strawman'in it.
You cannot be a good socialist – democratic or otherwise – and want to make a profit.
Who's a socialist?
Interesting that I find myself somewhat siding with Curmudgeon, but I suppose stranger things have happened.
VG: regarding your comment to MJ about O & G workers burying their earnings in backyards, of course, they don't do that. They spend the money. Here's where multipliers get tricky.
Hypothetical example from memory regarding the grazing study, which I'm not sure I have any longer: a local accountant in Montrose County does taxes for 100 persons. 20 of whom are ranchers, working primarily in the grazing industry. 80 of the clients work in other industries or are retired. That old study was twisted because grazing advocates tried to claim that the accountant would be unemployed were it not for their industry.
Now, transfer the framework to the O & G industry in Weld County and hopefully you begin to see the problem.
Don't feel bad, CHB, agreeing with me doesn't challenge your conservative bona fides. Even a bleeding heart liberal stopped clock is correct twice a day, right?
You're confusing multiplier effects and interdependence, chb
Something has to bring money into a local economy in the first place. In your example, ranching, tourism and government payments like social security do that. Those are primary dollars.
The accountant probably didn't bring new money in, he recycles the ranchers money as part of the multiplier effect. A rancher working part-time at the feed store is also part of the multiplier effect — he recycles dollars in the community, doesn't bring them in.
Naturally it gets complicated.
Buy mj and Curmy assert, for instance, that an industry with a $31 billion impact — or even a third ofvthat — wouldn't create a single job in banking and finance! Not one job? Those billions in capital just magically appear?
Not a single trucker hauls pipe to a drill site? Not one engineer flies in to survey a site, creating an airport job?
You can argue how big.the multiplier effect is, but if the $100,000 average is correct it would be high.
But only an idiot or a liar would deny that such a multiplier exists. I'd guess Hickenlooper was close with his estimate of 100,00 plus jobs.
Curmy can't even count to three without screwingvup and mj is so twisted with resentment she deliberately tries to understate the numbers.
Keep screeching, V. Maybe no one will notice you shit the bed with that skewed study. Or, maybe they will, like always.
Maybe next time you can tell us how DuPont told you C8 was no big deal?
O&G is staffed primarily with out-of-town workers because the industry does not want workers with distractions, like families and friends…or side jobs. Companies have learned that local boys are often late to work, miss days of work for kids events…like that.
It is more cost effective to bring them in from out of town so they don't mind working incredibly long shifts in terrible weather.
To the Oily Boyz, the workers out in the patch are no more important than a swabbing cup or a pipe wrench….they are just tools to be used up, worn out, and discarded. The rare ones with the right " attitude" climb the ladder. They are almost exclusively white men, by the way.
Ladies, and gentlemen of color, are rare in O&G management.
As an afterthought, I am not certain that O&G operations aren’t a net loss for Colorado. They pay some taxes but are so heavily subsidized I don’t think it comes close to covering the negative impacts.
"We believe North Park offers good risk adjusted rates of return and the upside could be very compelling for a company of our size," he said. "Part of our North Park capital program is designed to help reduce the uncertainty with respect to the resource in place because we truly don't know how big it is. If we find that all of our acreage is equally commercial as our approved area, we could have as many as 2,000 wells or more to drill there — hence the reason why we're so excited about North Park…"
"…The company entered bankruptcy protection for several months in 2016. During a strategic review that began last May, billionaire hedge fund activist Carl Icahn took control. The reorganized the board rejected multiple offers for a merger or sale last September…."
The second quarter of 2019 starts today, I think. The results of the western North Park test should be coming soon.
Do you know if North Park gas is subject to the Rocky Mountain Discount? If it is cheaper to find pipeline space, I can see it might be cheaper to remove than Piceance gas, therefore, more profitable.
On the other hand, just because a hedge fund/ oil company says it, doesn't make it so.
Sutter, meanwhile, talked to analysts about ongoing efforts SandRidge is making to test out its Niobrara Shale play in its North Park Basin area in Colorado, its experimentation with gas to liquids technology at production sites there
New drilling in 2018 helped push our North Park Basin oil production to new heights. For the year, net production was one million barrels of oil, a 53% improvement over 2017 production. We achieved a monthly average peak net rate of 5,060 barrels oil per day in August. In the fourth quarter, with no new wells going to sales due to continuous multi-well pad drilling, we produced 314 MBo. Production increases from the field will be a regular due to the utilization of cost effective pad drilling with one rig.
The graph on Slide eight, shows the expected oil surge in early 2019, due to 11 wells going to sales in the first quarter.
Now moving to Slide nine, progress is being made on our gas processing facility installations. Our mechanical refrigeration unit has been up and running since January 2019. The unit reduces emissions by stripping natural gas liquids out of approximately two million cubic feet per day, or 30% of the total field gas stream. Fabrication continues on a gas-to-liquids skid at the same site and is scheduled to be in service Q2 2019. The new GTL skid funded by a third-party, will process 500 Mcf per day and is designed to completely convert the gas into marketable liquids, leaving no residual byproducts. The process reduces emissions while providing a minimal revenue stream.
I guess another thing they like about North Park is that it is kinda deserted, except, of course, for the gazillions of critters who can't afford lawyers who inhabit the place.
Funny thing about the O&G industry’s “multiplier effect,” it would seem that it would have its greatest impact in those states with fewest, or no, direct O&G production jobs?
Give some firm enough money, and I’ll bet they could count close to that 200,000 number of “indirect” jobs involved in the storage, transportation, sale, and delivery of O&G products in just about every state? Now, admittedly, I have yet to visit every state in America, but I’m pretty sure that even in Hawaii they drive cars, use propane grills, and have filling stations?
Maybe the whole “effect” is just bogus horseshit PR that’s conveniently flung about by the industry and its flacks? Maybe it’s just creative accounting for the benefit of those easily gulled?
Question #2. A college professor receives an $80,000 annual salary. What makes some belligerent asshole think that the oil worker’s (temporary — ka’boom, ka’bust) $80,000 salary has any greater “multiplier effect” than the professor’s, or anyone else’s, $80,000 salary? Show your work, asshole:
PS — That’s all you got? really?
PPS — I never said there was no O&G “multiplier effect,” but that it would apparently have it’s greatest impact in states with little, or no, direct O&G employment. It’s mathy, and it appears that it’s probably past your nap time, so ask someone who cares to try to explain it for you . . .
your examples don't really work. the multiplier effect steps from jobs that bring money into the community, as gas exports do, in the case of your professor, tell me if he teaches out-of-state students, who do bring new money into the community, which turns around a few times before leaving, or if he only spends his time teaching Curmy to roll over, at the expense of county taxpayers. in that case he is part of the multiplier effect.
So, you are wrong. But thanks for helping Curmy. He does need to roll over from time to time.
I guess, then, all those outta’ state O&G guys earning money here and sending it back home to Louisiana and Texas are really just a drain on the Colorado economy? You’re so full of hot air and gas, you probably require your very own dirigble hangar? (5XLT kinda’ makes more sense now, originally I thought maybe you were looking for a boat cover?). Fling your BS elsewhere, and don’t try playing this game when you’re still groggy and not yet fully awake from your nap, huh?
M-1 ain’t just an old toy geriatric dogfaces used to play with . . .
. . . and Hawaii still looks to have the highest direct O&G jobs “multiplier effect” impact in the country.
Gas exports may bring some money into a community as a result of salaries and benefits. But what is the percentage/amount of leakage? Don't the profits end up in corporate offices? No local economy is a closed off economic system.
. . . he started out with nothing but just a BS number and “effect” that Vicki Marble probably pillowed-talked into his ear, and he’s just making it worse with every garbled nonsensical utterance.
that is exactly the point. Curmy gives 20 to DIO for meth. Dio restocks with $10 worth of Sudafed from China, and spends the other ten bucks on porn. The porn shop guy spends $5 on new feelthy pitchers from LA and the other five is donated to a TV evangelist, who pays it in blackmail to his secretary.
each time money circulates it creates local economic activity but part of it leaks outside. Eventually, it has to be replenished from outside. farm sales do that. agricultural subsidies to rich white guys do that. the money goes round and round.
purely internal transactions — like the $2 Curmy pays for a haircut (yes, he's cheap) are important. But they don't replenish the pot. Without some source of incoming moneys, towns die.
so dio's examples mostly recycle money in hawaii. they don't bring money in.
V's gone full-on Trump, now. No coming back from that. There's something really creepy in the personal attacks, though; something you normally see in incredibly repressed neo-conservative types.
Maybe some of our favorite conservative trolls never actually left. Maybe they've been here the whole time, and we're just now witnessing the integration of these personalities that have been split for so long.
"without some source of incoming monies, towns die……" V is overlooking transfer payments: retirement checks of all kinds, like Social Security or PERA; dividends and interest; alimony; etc. Depending on the demographics of a given community, transfer payments may be half of all income in said community.
Didn't ignore them, banger "Agricultural subsies to rich white guys" are a classic, albeit unjustified, form of government transfer payments. Still, if that's all you have, your town won't be very prosperous.
in some eastern colorado communities, serving retirees is one of our few growth industries. My Holyoke has a very fine nursing home.
30,000, 232,000, 81,000 – who cares, if its a number then use it! Baffle 'em with bullshit. Who cares? Media will simply transcribe it regardless of what the same outlet may have claimed a few days before.
The Colorado Oil and Gas Association report, compiled by an economist from the University of Colorado Denver, says the state's oil and gas sector employed about 30,000 people in 2017, created about 51,000 additional jobs, added about $13.5 billion to Colorado's domestic product and provided 81 percent of the distributions doled out through the School Trust.
March 18, 2019 10:25 AM UTC
58 Comments
The Greeley Tribune runs a regular column entitled the Weld County 
Good diary, Pete. Even the alternative rock station (KBCO) is playing nonstop industry talking points (voters rejected 112, so clearly no need for safety or oversight, 181 will kill millions of jobs, etc). So it helps to have at least some clear-headed pushback.
I agree it’s an excellent diary.
But, KBCO is a Clear Channel station. So no surprise there. And the music they play is a corporate version of what some accountant thinks is alternative.
Nice work, Pete.
The production guys over in these parts are busy every night. The drilling rigs are still mostly absent here. We see a couple between Debeque and Rifle. The red army is rolling every night, however, bringing capped wells on line and refracking others…expanding compressor stations and such. The Halliburton trucks seem to be ever present.
I suspect the production increase may be in order to fulfill supply contracts. I can't imagine it is to take advantage of high prices.
Or…maybe, they just know what is about to happen to them. The people of Colorado have had enough of the Fossilonian s. House bills 1341, 1265, and 1298, passed in 2009, I think, had the same, or similar, intentions as this current bill. Sometimes I wonder how far along we would have come without the treachery of Gov. Frackenlooper.
Now it seems we are on the verge of returning to the promise of what Harris Sherman called, "a fundamental shift in the balance of power between the oil and gas industry and the people of Colorado"
If the Democrats, more specifically Governor Polis, are willing to stick to their positions and withstand the political onslaught from the Oily Boys, we may someday see an O&G industry that operates fairly and honestly in Colorado.
Got to fleece those
investorssuckers while they can:https://cleantechnica.com/2018/05/21/the-great-american-fracking-bubble/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/opinion/the-next-financial-crisis-lurks-underground.amp.html
Enron was not an aberration, but only just the beginning. I don’t know why this isn’t generating more concern and discussion? (But, I can guess . . .)
Exactly. Hype aside, this is an industry that is trying to suck out all the profits while they still can, get investors to invest in spite of poor returns, and get consumers to absorb the social costs, as always.
It is "an industry built on debt", and like Trump, there are limits to borrowing more money to pay off the borrowed money. It's why my pension fund loses money – they haven't divested from fossil fuels.
“You mean, we can: trash the global environment, pollute the air, poison the groundwater, endanger the lives and health and homes of workers and nearby residents, . . .
. . . AND finance this all with humongous debt in a ponzi scheme that we can never repay, wiping out the retirement savings and pensions of millions, and likely creating the next great financial panic catastrophe??!!??
Sweeeeeeeeeeeeet! God bless America!”
Spot on, Dio. Denver (and surrounding environs) always has been a boom-and-bust town and I see another one coming.
The model is only profitable because it is exploitative–of natural resources, of communities, of capital. Accountability is what this industry most fears–for its true costs, for its impacts, for its fundamentals.
O.K., I've read a lot about this subject, now it is time to ask questions.
The oil industry oppose 181, sent employees to demonstrate, etc., they claim 1000's of jobs will go away if this bill passes.
Question: Of all the oil company employees working in Colorado —- exactly how many of those employees are actually Colorado citizens? I mean really live here, vote here, pay the normal property taxes, so on and so forth. Or are they fly-in types just to work the equipment, and send the paycheck to other parts of the country?
I ask this question, (yes, badly), because a few years ago, I used to drive a truck and delivered equipment all over Colorado to drill sites. Many of those employees of the oil companies I spoke with had so thick East Texas/Louisiana Cajun accents that I had trouble understanding many of them.
Any ideas?
There are about 26,000 direct jobs in the oil and gas industry as of 2018, per the Colorado Bureau of Labor. I would guess that the majority of those salaried jobs are Coloradans, although not necessarily from the locality they’re drilling in. Oil and gas workers move to where the jobs are. (As Duke wrote)
Then there are temp hourly jobs in welding, driving and hauling, and general labor. Anecdotally, I can state that about half of those jobs are immigrant labor – semiskilled young men who are recruited precisely because they are not citizens, do not speak English well, and so are easily exploited. Several of my young male Latino students go into the industry that way. Every year, some of these young men are injured or blown up with very little follow up by media and crocodile tears from the industry.
To know the truth about this, we’d have to rely on these companies to tell the truth. I think you know how that would turn out. Colorado BLS does have a wealth of demographic info on each industry, and its possible that you could tease out state residency. I’m on an iPad, so hard to get links, but I’ve posted them here before.
The industry's new Price Waterhouse study cites 232,900 oil and gas jobs in Colorado, with average total compensation of $101,000 and total impact of $31.6 billion.
That’s 6.5 percent of Colorado jobs.
Got a link to that study?
Yes, please…
Found it! It's a study from 2015, commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute:
https://www.api.org/~/media/Files/Policy/Jobs/Economics-Nat-Gas-Oil/API_OilEconomy_Colorado.pdf
"Natural gas and oil activity support a wide-array of jobs. They include everything from petroleum engineers, environmental experts and rig hands to truck drivers, caterers and contractors that benefit from the industry’s economic activity"
So, V is quoting 4 year old data, and lumping in everything the industry claims as Direct, Indirect, and Induced impact to make his “232,900 Oil and Gas jobs” claim. I sure wouldn’t mind one of those $101,000/year catering jobs.
Facts is facts , Curmy, including the well-established multiplier effect. I'm sure you prefer it when MJ just blows a figure out her ass and rants about illegal aliens, Trump style.
VG: multiplier effects are easy to play with. I remember a study in the livestock grazing industry some years ago that tried to claim that small, rural, towns in the West were dependent on the grazing industry for economic viabiility. The actual truth was the opposite because ranchers depended on those small towns for second jobs.
Same has held true for off-road vehicle recreation. Those studies also played with multipliers to enhance the value of the industry in the Colorado economy.
Without reviewing the quoted studies, I’ll offer that the number of actual created jobs in the O & G industry is far closer to the figure quoted by MJ. Another useful reference is County Business Patterns for the State of Colorado, published periodically by the US Dept. of Labor.
That's true, but it doesn't mean such effects don'texist. MJ pretends every penny earned by an oil and gas worker is buried in their back yard and not recycled through the local economy. That's just a stupid assumption.
As to Curmy, our local Alzheimer/weisenheimer can't even do first grade arirthmetic. He claims the study is four years old. But it reports activity throughout 2015, which even if you compiled it on New Year's day 2016 would make it just three years old. Or did I misss that this is still 2019?
Don't get butt-hurt just because I exposed your bullshit study.
Don't cry because you are so dumb you can't even tell the difference between four years ago and three years ago. Face it, Curmy, you are dumb.
One more time — from the end of 2015 to today is:
2016
2017
2018
So even allowing no time at all to collect and compile data, it is just three years from the end of 2015 to early 2019.
You. Are. Dumb.
Did I mention you're dumb?
Ohh, sorry.
Okay, let's say my date math is wrong.
You fucked up on everything else, Captain Distraction.
Boy are you dumb, Curmy.
It's not my study.
It's Price waterhouse cooper.
Have a nice day — once you figure out what day it is.
Sure, it is…and the interpretation is all O&G bullshit, that you gladly regurgitate like a good little acolyte. But you keep pretending it's not hilariously skewed and misleading.
Actually, I keep pretending you're dumb!
Wow, you do tend to regress when you're cornered, don't you?
The less you have, the nastier you get, V. That's been true for a long time. Clearly, the only thing you have right now is a self-serving study put out by the American Petroleum Institute.
It's a busy day for me, so I'll just post these stats, not out of my ass, but from the nonpartisan Colorado Department of Labor, which tracks actual jobs in actual industries in Colorado….again.
———–
There are not over 50,000 jobs in extraction. Nor 112,000 as Hick claimed, nor 250,000 as COGCC claimed.
Last year, in 2018, there were about 26,000 jobs in Colorado directly related to oil and gas exraction. See for yourself. Go to Colorado Dept. of Labor and Employment, Labor Market Information, Occupational analysis and look up "extraction". Oil and gas extraction is part of the Mining, Logging, and Construction sector, but most of that is building construction.
For extraction workers in 2018, there were 24, 853 annual job openings.
A search with keyword "oil" turns up other occupations, such as rotary drillhead operator. That one only had 179 annual openings.
Support workers for mining operations is only .6% (that's .06 for the math impaired) of all jobs in Colorado now, not the huge sector COGCC likes to brag on. Oil and gas extraction as a whole comprises about 3% of all jobs in Colorado.
As many people exit as are coming into oil work, and the overall trend is down. The salaries of most people on the ground are nowhere near that $80K figure often cited. It's a profitable business for the CEOs, surely, and probably for the top execs and engineers and lobbyists. But not for the roughnecks freezing their asses off and risking getting blown up every day. Those guys are getting from about $37- 55K a year.
Always check your stats at the source.
As for the multiplier effects, with oil and gas direct jobs being 3% of the Colorado GDP, those "multiplier jobs" would be proportionally small.
Manufacturing has ~150,000 jobs as of 1/19
Construction has ~175,000 jobs as of 1/19
Cannabis has ~31,000 jobs in Colorado as of 1/19
This report is from Leafly’s Cannabis Jobs Report (2019), which tracks cannabis-related job growth all over the US, and state by state. The Bureau of Labor Statistics still doesn’t track cannabis jobs, and won’t until 2022, when an official cannabis jobs classification will be added.
So those jobs, too, have "multiplier effects", although V will argue that somehow oil and gas jobs have greater multipliers. My own experience contradicts this; I can look out my classroom window and see dozens of construction workers working on a new school building. Their salaries are ~ 20% paid by the BEST grant, which was partly funded by the 15% sales tax on cannabis products.
Colorado employs about 3 million people. Gas and Oil direct jobs employ about 26,000 people. So even if oil and gas has a uniquely productive multiplier effect, more than construction, manufacturing, or agriculture, that is still a small sector (~3%) of the Colorado economy.
Ahh,, the sound of "" Ride of the Valkyries" sound again as mj reasserts her claims that, a:
A multibillion dollar industry doesn't create a singLe job in transportation, finance, recreation or other industries.
There is no difference between primary jobs which bring money into a community, and secondary jobs like banking and retail
and, for that matter, teaching, which recycle that money within the community, thereby causing the.multiplier effect.
I know you hate it when I show your ideological prejudce biases your thinking.
So stop letting your bias drive you conclusion!
Show.me one credible study from a third party that backs your claim.
Curmy doesn't count.
Falling back on your own memes, are you?
How Trumpian.
Maybe a "Crooked Hillary" or "Witch Hunt" next?
I just have to chuckle at you chiding anyone for implicit bias prior to investigation. You keep on hugging that API oil industry study, V….and ignoring what the bureaucrats at the Bureau of Labor Stats have to say.
You asked about a prior study. I can dig up two Leeds business studies on oil and gas jobs from 2014-2015. One was funded by COGA and the American Petroleum Institute – the same corporate authority you cite. It attempted to scare people about the "total fracking ban" which nobody was promoting in any ballot initiative at the time, although there were several setbacks and local control initiatives circulating.
Unsurprisingly, that study was and is still the source for the 215,000 jobs figure, which included your magical mystical 10X induced job multiplier.
Leeds school of business puts out a study on economic impacts of oil and gas every year. In 2014, the authors found about 33,000 direct jobs. That was before they started inflating the numbers with the "induced" and "indirect" nonsense. They also cite the Bureau of Labor Statistics as their source for data – which is the same source you accuse me of "pulling out of my ass", which sounds uncomfortable to say the least.
We all know by now that when you have no facts and no data, you start throwing insults. It makes you look mean and ridiculous, but hey, you do you.
Yeah, well, Vicki Marble recently cited that same number (give, or take, a billion maybe) . . ,
. . . so, V’s in company, there.
V, a Marble-esque mouthpiece for the O&G industry?
Say it ain't so.
Egad!
Are you suggesting the industry wants to make a profit?
The monsters!
I have no issue with making a profit. I have an issue with your knowingly using deceptive figures to make your case. But you keep on strawman'in it.
You cannot be a good socialist – democratic or otherwise – and want to make a profit.
Who's a socialist?
Interesting that I find myself somewhat siding with Curmudgeon, but I suppose stranger things have happened.
VG: regarding your comment to MJ about O & G workers burying their earnings in backyards, of course, they don't do that. They spend the money. Here's where multipliers get tricky.
Hypothetical example from memory regarding the grazing study, which I'm not sure I have any longer: a local accountant in Montrose County does taxes for 100 persons. 20 of whom are ranchers, working primarily in the grazing industry. 80 of the clients work in other industries or are retired. That old study was twisted because grazing advocates tried to claim that the accountant would be unemployed were it not for their industry.
Now, transfer the framework to the O & G industry in Weld County and hopefully you begin to see the problem.
Don't feel bad, CHB, agreeing with me doesn't challenge your conservative bona fides. Even a bleeding heart liberal stopped clock is correct twice a day, right?
You're confusing multiplier effects and interdependence, chb
Something has to bring money into a local economy in the first place. In your example, ranching, tourism and government payments like social security do that. Those are primary dollars.
The accountant probably didn't bring new money in, he recycles the ranchers money as part of the multiplier effect. A rancher working part-time at the feed store is also part of the multiplier effect — he recycles dollars in the community, doesn't bring them in.
Naturally it gets complicated.
Buy mj and Curmy assert, for instance, that an industry with a $31 billion impact — or even a third ofvthat — wouldn't create a single job in banking and finance! Not one job? Those billions in capital just magically appear?
Not a single trucker hauls pipe to a drill site? Not one engineer flies in to survey a site, creating an airport job?
You can argue how big.the multiplier effect is, but if the $100,000 average is correct it would be high.
But only an idiot or a liar would deny that such a multiplier exists. I'd guess Hickenlooper was close with his estimate of 100,00 plus jobs.
Curmy can't even count to three without screwingvup and mj is so twisted with resentment she deliberately tries to understate the numbers.
Keep screeching, V. Maybe no one will notice you shit the bed with that skewed study. Or, maybe they will, like always.
Maybe next time you can tell us how DuPont told you C8 was no big deal?
O&G is staffed primarily with out-of-town workers because the industry does not want workers with distractions, like families and friends…or side jobs. Companies have learned that local boys are often late to work, miss days of work for kids events…like that.
It is more cost effective to bring them in from out of town so they don't mind working incredibly long shifts in terrible weather.
To the Oily Boyz, the workers out in the patch are no more important than a swabbing cup or a pipe wrench….they are just tools to be used up, worn out, and discarded. The rare ones with the right " attitude" climb the ladder. They are almost exclusively white men, by the way.
Ladies, and gentlemen of color, are rare in O&G management.
As an afterthought, I am not certain that O&G operations aren’t a net loss for Colorado. They pay some taxes but are so heavily subsidized I don’t think it comes close to covering the negative impacts.
"We believe North Park offers good risk adjusted rates of return and the upside could be very compelling for a company of our size," he said. "Part of our North Park capital program is designed to help reduce the uncertainty with respect to the resource in place because we truly don't know how big it is. If we find that all of our acreage is equally commercial as our approved area, we could have as many as 2,000 wells or more to drill there — hence the reason why we're so excited about North Park…"
"…The company entered bankruptcy protection for several months in 2016. During a strategic review that began last May, billionaire hedge fund activist Carl Icahn took control. The reorganized the board rejected multiple offers for a merger or sale last September…."
https://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/117635-sandridge-planning-detective-work-in-colorados-north-park-basin
Interesting stuff, Pete.
The second quarter of 2019 starts today, I think. The results of the western North Park test should be coming soon.
Do you know if North Park gas is subject to the Rocky Mountain Discount? If it is cheaper to find pipeline space, I can see it might be cheaper to remove than Piceance gas, therefore, more profitable.
On the other hand, just because a hedge fund/ oil company says it, doesn't make it so.
I think its oil in North Park actually, with gas being mostly collected for liquids…
And from a recent shareholder report
Right…Niobrara.
I guess another thing they like about North Park is that it is kinda deserted, except, of course, for the gazillions of critters who can't afford lawyers who inhabit the place.
Funny thing about the O&G industry’s “multiplier effect,” it would seem that it would have its greatest impact in those states with fewest, or no, direct O&G production jobs?
Give some firm enough money, and I’ll bet they could count close to that 200,000 number of “indirect” jobs involved in the storage, transportation, sale, and delivery of O&G products in just about every state? Now, admittedly, I have yet to visit every state in America, but I’m pretty sure that even in Hawaii they drive cars, use propane grills, and have filling stations?
Maybe the whole “effect” is just bogus horseshit PR that’s conveniently flung about by the industry and its flacks? Maybe it’s just creative accounting for the benefit of those easily gulled?
Or, maybe you' don’t understand a concept discussed in every elementary economics test?
Question: A n oil worker earns $80,000 in a year. What does he do with it?
A: buries it in his back yard so that he has no economic impact (the mj pproposition) or
B: Buys a house, a car, and sends his kid to school, thereby helping create new jobs in construction, manufacturing and education.
Go ahead, Dio, you're a high school graduate. Venture a guess!
Question #2. A college professor receives an $80,000 annual salary. What makes some belligerent asshole think that the oil worker’s (temporary — ka’boom, ka’bust) $80,000 salary has any greater “multiplier effect” than the professor’s, or anyone else’s, $80,000 salary? Show your work, asshole:
PS — That’s all you got? really?
PPS — I never said there was no O&G “multiplier effect,” but that it would apparently have it’s greatest impact in states with little, or no, direct O&G employment. It’s mathy, and it appears that it’s probably past your nap time, so ask someone who cares to try to explain it for you . . .
See, Dio?
Everyone else is just too stupid to understand how brilliant V is.
Study it out.
your examples don't really work. the multiplier effect steps from jobs that bring money into the community, as gas exports do, in the case of your professor, tell me if he teaches out-of-state students, who do bring new money into the community, which turns around a few times before leaving, or if he only spends his time teaching Curmy to roll over, at the expense of county taxpayers. in that case he is part of the multiplier effect.
So, you are wrong. But thanks for helping Curmy. He does need to roll over from time to time.
I guess, then, all those outta’ state O&G guys earning money here and sending it back home to Louisiana and Texas are really just a drain on the Colorado economy? You’re so full of hot air and gas, you probably require your very own dirigble hangar? (5XLT kinda’ makes more sense now, originally I thought maybe you were looking for a boat cover?). Fling your BS elsewhere, and don’t try playing this game when you’re still groggy and not yet fully awake from your nap, huh?
M-1 ain’t just an old toy geriatric dogfaces used to play with . . .
. . . and Hawaii still looks to have the highest direct O&G jobs “multiplier effect” impact in the country.
Gas exports may bring some money into a community as a result of salaries and benefits. But what is the percentage/amount of leakage? Don't the profits end up in corporate offices? No local economy is a closed off economic system.
He’s just flailing now . . .
. . . he started out with nothing but just a BS number and “effect” that Vicki Marble probably pillowed-talked into his ear, and he’s just making it worse with every garbled nonsensical utterance.
Dio, I,m sorry I called you a high school graduate. but that GED of yours counts in my book!
that is exactly the point. Curmy gives 20 to DIO for meth. Dio restocks with $10 worth of Sudafed from China, and spends the other ten bucks on porn. The porn shop guy spends $5 on new feelthy pitchers from LA and the other five is donated to a TV evangelist, who pays it in blackmail to his secretary.
each time money circulates it creates local economic activity but part of it leaks outside. Eventually, it has to be replenished from outside. farm sales do that. agricultural subsidies to rich white guys do that. the money goes round and round.
purely internal transactions — like the $2 Curmy pays for a haircut (yes, he's cheap) are important. But they don't replenish the pot. Without some source of incoming moneys, towns die.
so dio's examples mostly recycle money in hawaii. they don't bring money in.
ROFL (still)
Ok, stop. I just spent the last 90 minutes at swimming workout trying not to drown, I’ve been laughing so hard.
I admit, I got nothing to compete with your intimate personal knowledge of meth dealin’, porn monkey, televangelists and their secretaries. Nothing.
I concede. You are without question da’ Hindenburg here, V!!!
V's gone full-on Trump, now. No coming back from that. There's something really creepy in the personal attacks, though; something you normally see in incredibly repressed neo-conservative types.
Maybe some of our favorite conservative trolls never actually left. Maybe they've been here the whole time, and we're just now witnessing the integration of these personalities that have been split for so long.
"without some source of incoming monies, towns die……" V is overlooking transfer payments: retirement checks of all kinds, like Social Security or PERA; dividends and interest; alimony; etc. Depending on the demographics of a given community, transfer payments may be half of all income in said community.
Didn't ignore them, banger "Agricultural subsies to rich white guys" are a classic, albeit unjustified, form of government transfer payments. Still, if that's all you have, your town won't be very prosperous.
in some eastern colorado communities, serving retirees is one of our few growth industries. My Holyoke has a very fine nursing home.
30,000, 232,000, 81,000 – who cares, if its a number then use it! Baffle 'em with bullshit. Who cares? Media will simply transcribe it regardless of what the same outlet may have claimed a few days before.