Oil and gas companies claim their production in Colorado is among the cleanest and least polluting hydrocarbons in the country — if not the world. Are they right?
The assertion — from a fact sheet by the Colorado Oil & Gas Association, an industry trade group — has legs. PDC Energy, an oil and gas firm recently purchased by Chevron Corp., cited it in an application to drill hundreds of wells, which was approved by regulators in late 2022. U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and his Republican rival Joe O’Dea repeated it in televised debates during their 2022 campaign. And the U.S. Bureau of Land Management referenced it in a 2023 federal supplemental environmental Impact statement. Fossil fuel advocates leaned into it in the spring to justify why Colorado legislators should kill a bill that would have phased out fossil fuel drilling.
