A group drafting ballot measures aimed at giving Colorado residents more control over oil and gas drilling in neighborhoods told The Colorado Statesman on Wednesday that the lack of action by state regulators has given “greater impetus” to their cause.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission this week was unable to reach consensus on its proposed local-control rules that would give counties and towns more say over state-controlled oil and gas drilling operations, pushing the process into December.

“We didn’t really expect much out of this process, so to have so little to come out of it — and so little to protect the citizens of Colorado — isn’t really a surprise to us,” said Tricia Olson, executive director of Coloradans Resisting Extreme Energy Development, or CREED, which is drafting and vetting at least a half dozen ballot measures it plans to submit to the Colorado Legislative Council in early December.

Colorado Petroleum Council Executive Director Tracee Bentley told The Statesman the industry has not given up on the state’s rulemaking process.

“We are still committed to working with the COGCC on reasonable solutions that avoid unnecessary regulations on operators,” Bentley said. “We also believe that, should someone come forward with a ballot initiative that would hinder or threaten Colorado’s energy resurgence, we have every indication the people of Colorado understand the importance of the oil and natural gas industry to our state and the $25 billion we contribute to our economy.”

After two days of contentious hearings in Denver on Monday and Tuesday, the COGCC scheduled another hearing for Dec. 7, with probably still another hearing at an undetermined date after that.

Commission spokesman Todd Hartmann said it’s “hard to say” what impact that schedule has on director Matt Lepore’s goal of finalizing the rulemaking process by the end of the year. He disagreed, however, with media reports calling the rulemaking process “bogged down.”

“We would politely disagree with ‘bogging down,’” Hartmann told The Statesman. “As you know, these are extremely difficult issues to sort through with strong feelings across the board. Commission values all the input.”

One of the biggest sticking points — Lepore told The Statesman in September it was a tricky issue — remains the definition of a large-scale drilling facility that would trigger the need for consultation by a local jurisdiction. Industry representatives would like to see a narrower definition of what constitutes a large-scale facility.

The dispute centers around whether to adopt rules proposed earlier this year by the governor’s oil and gas task force, formed in 2014 to head off competing ballot measures and charged with recommending new rules. The sides are at odds over two in particular — Recommendations 17 and 20, which define large-scale facilities and require how industry has to consult with local governments.

Nine of the 21 members of the task force told the commission that they backed the task force’s recommendations because they felt they would do more to “provide relief” from drilling impacts than the commission’s draft rules. Led by former state Rep. and Secretary of State Bernie Buescher, the former task force members said they came up with the recommendations in order to protect against drilling operations beyond so-called Urban Mitigation Areas, the technical term for drilling sites in neighborhoods.

“Please ensure that the rule can provide relief for all Coloradans when these large, industrialized facilities are proposed near their homes and schools,” they wrote.

According to the commission’s own analysis, only a tiny fraction of the drilling and storage sites approved in Colorado over the past two years were in Urban Mitigation Areas. Industry representatives, however, say far more drilling sites will be covered by the new rules in coming years, as more and more oil and gas is discovered near major residential areas. They counter that the proposed rules go far beyond what they signed off on by the task force.

“If Recommendations 17 and 20 were written the same as the draft rules before you, the industry representatives and maybe even a few non-industry members would not have voted in favor of the recommendations, and as such would not have passed out of the task force,” Colorado Oil & Gas Association President and CEO Dan Haley told the commission.

COGA and other industry trade associations would like to see much more defined timelines for consultation with local jurisdictions so that they can’t indefinitely delay drilling operations and therefore prevent companies from accessing resources they own and have a right to extract.

Bentley told the commission that revisions to rules are “duplicative, unnecessary and in conflict with the COGCC’s original recommendations. The current proposals contradict key recommendations from the governor’s task force and could create needless roadblocks to responsible energy production.”

At this point, no matter what rules the commission adopts and no matter how long it takes, CREED says it will be moving forward with ballot questions that run the gamut from an outright fracking ban statewide to local-control measures or greater setback requirements for drilling operations.

In 2014, two ballot initiatives — one requiring more local control and one requiring greater setbacks — were pulled after their main proponent, U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, a Boulder Democrat, struck a compromise with Gov. John Hickenlooper to set up the task force. CREED’s Olson said her group has not had recent contact with Polis.

“We have not had serious dialogue [with Polis],” Olson said. “We probably had dialogue like a year ago at some point, but no serious dialogue since then. If he likes what we’re doing, that’s good. If he doesn’t, then it’s not going to stop us.” She added that other prominent state conservation groups have reached out to CREED, although she declined to name them.

“There has been outreach to us from people who would not have supported us in 2014, saying that they would now,” Olson said. “People who had faith in the process, but the process hasn’t worked out.”

— davido@realvail.com