Air quality along the Front Range is affected now by smoke from wild fires to our west. Southwest Colorado is under alert due to lightning-caused fires near Durango. 

It’s not like June, 2002 when then-Gov. Bill Owens, in a cri de coeur, said, “It looks like all of Colorado is burning today.” But the clearly defined mountains to the west of the Front Range, benefiting from fewer cars on the road and less industrial activity, are cloaked now in haze with a “moderate” ozone alert.

So yes, Dan Haley from the Colorado Oil and Gas Association is correct when he says that ozone and other air pollution blows over Colorado from the west. And he’s right to say that methane (and ethane) are not generally considered as volatile organic chemicals, as he did in a recent commentary replying to one of my columns (“IN RESPONSE | Noonan needs a methane tutorial,” June 12). 

But, as a radio commentator used to say, let’s know the rest of the story. Methane has a critical role to play in ozone creation.  According to Acid News (now that’s a scary journal name), “Ground-level, or tropospheric, ozone is produced by the interaction of sunlight with emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), volatile organic compounds (VOC) and methane (CH₄).” 

Another article from the Royal Society of Chemistry from the UK states, “Oxidation of methane is responsible for the majority of the ozone formation in the troposphere… Production of the hydroxyl radical (OH), which is responsible for almost all the oxidation of methane in the troposphere, is controlled by the levels of ozone.” This article describes a feedback loop involving methane, the hydroxyl radical OH, and water vapor that increases or decreases ozone formation in the troposphere.

Oil and gas drilling, with methane as the principal component of natural gas, also creates ozone through a hitchhiking process in which volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) come up from wells thousands of feet deep along with the fuel product. When the VOCs disperse into the ground level atmosphere, a chemical process occurs with the intense sunlight of summer that produces ozone. 

Haley states that “depending on the day and location” ozone may principally come from sources blowing in from the west. But on enough days, ozone comes to the Front Range from the northeast, primarily Weld county, and drifts toward Fort Collins south to Douglas County. It’s for all these reasons that Colorado is seriously ozone non-compliant under federal standards.

This information is not new news. 

Haley states that the energy industry is a strong partner with government agencies in reducing ozone formation, which at least acknowledges that oil and gas drilling plays a role. Currently, oil and gas oversight agencies rely on industry to identify and self-report leaks and other pollution accidents and events. This methodology, as the state now recognizes through legislation, is inadequate. 

The Air Pollution Control Division is just now contracting to do airplane monitoring and has plans to add two more ground level monitoring stations, according to Garry Kaufman, director. Additional monitoring and measuring projects are a couple of years out.

News from the oil and gas industry comes fast and hard. Extraction Oil and Gas has joined Whiting Petroleum as a driller seeking bankruptcy relief in the Denver-Julesburg play. British Petroleum (BP) announced it’s writing off $17.5 billion of its holdings, recognizing that its assets are not as valuable with COVID-19 and other changes to the industry. BP doesn’t anticipate returning to business as usual.

So, in addition to pollution and climate-change concerns, Coloradans living near oil and gas drilling operations and producing and abandoned wells can also worry about what happens to that industrial gear and product if companies are financially unable to manage these assets. Companies typically put up $10,000 per well and a maximum of $100,000 for over 100 wells. 

Today’s well closings, especially with the deep drilling of fracking operations, will cost much more than $10,000/well to close and plug. So, in sum, the mountains are now hazy with smoke from the west and the fate of oil and gas operations is hazy based on science and economics. 

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.