While resolving several lawsuits over its controversial November election, Broomfield officials say they are bracing for additional legal action over the city and county ban on oil and gas hydrofracturing.
Broomfield has faced four court cases since November because of the way it conducted its election, in which a five-year ban on fracking passed by just 20 votes.
Fracking pumps large volumes of water, sand and trace chemicals into a well under pressure to crack rock, releasing oil and gas.
Many of the existing cases have been resolved or are scheduled to be resolved soon, but Bill Tuthill, city and county attorney, said he anticipates oil and gas company Sovereign will bring a lawsuit now that the fracking ban is official. “I’m confident that there will be activity in the legal arena with Sovereign anywhere from a month to six weeks from now,” he said.
Broomfield has 97 active wells. The companies running those wells, such as Anadarko, Encana and Sovereign, have drilled in Broomfield in the past, but haven’t drilled on those sites since summer 2013, Tuthill said.
The ban means those companies have not been able to re-frack their existing sites, Tuthill said.
Sovereign, an oil and gas company with several active wells in Broomfield, hoped to drill several new ones. The ban has stymied those plans.
Tom Metzger, chief operating officer of Sovereign, was out of town and not available for comment, according to a representative from the company.
In August, Broomfield and Sovereign signed a memorandum of understanding that would have allowed Sovereign to drill 21 wells on four sites — as long as the company complied with 35 of Broomfield’s new, more stringent oil and gas drilling standards.
In November, voters narrowly approved the ban on fracking, putting Sovereign’s plans on hold.
