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Colorado oil and gas companies have pumped at least 30 million pounds of undisclosed chemicals into the ground over the past 18 months without making legally required disclosures. This is despite Colorado's first-in-the-nation rules that require oil and gas operators and their suppliers to list all chemicals used in drilling and extraction (while also banning any use of PFAS “forever chemicals” at oil and gas sites).
The findings are part of a report released Tuesday by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Social Responsibility Colorado, FracTracker Alliance, and the Colorado Sierra Club. According to the analysis, since the transparency law took effect in July 2023, operators have fracked 1,114 sites across the state, but as of May 1st, chemical disclosures have not been filed for 675 of them – more than 60% of the total. Chevron, the world’s third-biggest fossil-fuel company, is by far the most serious offender, operating about 375 (more than half) of the non-compliant wells.
“We thought that the Colorado law was going to break through the culture of secrecy that surrounds the use of potentially toxic chemicals in oil and gas production,” said Dusty Horwitt, an attorney and researcher who was lead author on the analysis, which is based on public disclosures. “But the lack of compliance has left the secrecy in place, putting people’s health at risk.”
House Rules Committee debates budget reconciliation bill through the night
The House Rules Committee convened just after 1am this morning to consider hundreds of amendments to the budget reconciliation bill. The House leadership didn’t have the manager's amendment—the catch-all for the changes being negotiated by House Speaker Mike Johnson behind closed doors—when the committee members entered the middle-of-the-night meeting, and still did not it have it many hours later as they continued negotiating details well into the morning. It is unclear at this point if the proposal to sell hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands that was offered as an amendment by Reps. Mark Amodei and Celeste Maloy is still included. The bipartisan backlash to the public land sales proposal has been growing since the amendment was offered. A final vote is expected around mid-morning or later, depending on the timing of the manager’s amendment.
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Unique to this country, public lands are every American’s birthright, national treasure and greatest wealth. Selling our shared public estate is an idea the Herald’s editorial board fiercely opposes, as should all Americans and members of Congress.”
