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GREELEY — A Texas oil and gas firm that bought 17,000 acres of agricultural land in eastern Weld County for $29 million last year is planning to build a natural gas compressor station on a 20-acre site within that parcel. Cureton Midstream LLC, a Denver oil and gas transportation and processing infrastructure firm, is planning to build the facility on behalf of the property owner Black Mountain Land Co. LP, an affiliate of Fort Worth-based Black Mountain Oil and Gas LLC. “This facility will compress raw low pressure natural gas so that it can be transported to a downstream facility for further processing. Natural gas will enter and exit the facility via steel pipelines,” according to planning documents filed with Weld County. “The compressor station will also have separation and filtration equipment that will remove water, condensate and other impurities from the natural gas stream.” Equipment on the site, which is proposed to be built in a single phase, “will include combustors, launchers, receivers, pumps, tanks, catchers and separators, a temporary construction trailer and conex storage units,” development application documents show. The station would be unmanned and in operation around the clock. The compressor station application is scheduled next month for review by the Weld County Planning Commission. Cureton estimates the facility, known as When the Black Creek Compressor Station, will take four to six months to complete, public documents show. Representatives for Cureton and Black Mountain did not immediately respond to requests for comment. According to documents submitted to the county, the area where the facility is planned to be built has existing oil and gas operations. The closest residential properties are more than a mile away. “The applicant understands that being a good neighbor is a best practice,” the development application says. “In siting this facility, noise, air quality and lighting were considered.”

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LONGMONT — The city of Longmont has begun construction of a biogas treatment and renewable natural gas fueling station project with Fort Collins-based CGRS Inc. in charge of construction. Once complete, the project will transform sewage gas from the wastewater-treatment process into sustainable fuel for the city’s trash trucks. The city will replace 11 of its diesel trash trucks with trucks capable of using renewable natural gas. It is estimated that the city will offset more than 90,000 gallons of diesel fuel annually, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by about 1,000 metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalents per year — the equivalent of removing 200 cars from the road. In addition, by building the fueling station, the city is also able to take advantage of credits from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Renewable Fuel Standard program, CGRS said in a statement. CGRS’s CNG Construction Services department is building the entire project, which consists of two sites: The first is the city’s current wastewater plant to which CGRS will provide interconnections and gas-treatment equipment to clean the sewage gas. The renewable natural gas will be piped from the wastewater plant at 501 First Ave. to a second site on the northwest corner of the property off of South Martin Street. CGRS will build a 17,000-square-foot building with four bays for indoor fueling of the city’s trash fleet and a two-story, 5,000-square-foot administration building on that site. “This project is directly in line with the city’s sustainability plan,” said John Gage, civil engineer and project manager for the city of Longmont. “In 2018, Longmont completed the city’s first greenhouse gas inventory to develop a baseline of greenhouse gas emissions. Based on the results, we prioritized a number of strategies to reduce citywide greenhouse gas emissions, such as the transition to RNG trash trucks.” The city has contracted with Carollo Engineers, a national design firm with local offices in Broomfield and Littleton, to design and construct the biogas treatment system. CGRS is serving as project manager and construction contractor for the entire project, as well as designing the new fueling station. “I thought we were uniquely qualified with our experience in designing and building both wastewater and RNG facilities,” said Randy Kenyon, CGRS senior engineer and project manager. “We have a great team collaborating with the city of Longmont to bring this important project to fruition.” Becky Luna, design manager for Carollo, said her company is excited to support the city’s sustainability initiatives as well. “This state-of-the-art project is sustainability in action — the city will be able to make use of an untapped resource, reduce greenhouse gases and save on fuel costs,” she said. “Longmont will be the first city on the Front Range to implement a renewable vehicle fuel project; other utilities have been looking at Longmont as a model for their operations.”

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BROOMFIELD — Colorado Rising, a group that seeks to increase regulations on oil and gas operators, has filed a lawsuit on behalf of mineral rights owners in Broomfield that challenges the constitutionality of provisions of state law that allow for an industry practice called pooling. Pooling — referred to by critics as “forced pooling” and by the oil and gas industry as “statutory pooling” — is a way for oil and gas operators to access underground minerals owned by another party. Those other parties, who receive a royalty on the proceeds for oil or gas pumped from the ground, do not have to consent to the drilling operation. In Colorado the non-consenting mineral rights owners in a pool are paid a smaller royalty than those who consent to participate. Part of the purpose of pooling, which was added to state statutes in the 1930s, is to ensure a small group of mineral rights owners who object to drilling cannot hold up an oil and gas project involving multiple rights holders. Colorado Rising’s suit was filed in United States District Court. “Under the current law, mineral owners’ only choice is to lease their minerals or have their minerals force pooled,” according to a Colorado Rising news release that accompanied the group’s lawsuit. “Thus, many mineral owners report that they signed leases under duress and would have preferred to have the right to decide when or if they monetize their minerals or to leave their minerals in the ground due to health, safety and environmental concerns. Pooling requests by oil and gas operators, which have become more common in recent years due to advancements in horizontal drilling capabilities, are reviewed by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. “The practice of forced pooling is in essence a taking of private property for corporate gain by order of the state,” Colorado Rising organizer Anne Lee Foster said in a prepared statement. “Forced pooling is a perfect example of Colorado’s antiquated oil and gas laws that must be updated in accordance with modern technology, including horizontal fracking and the practice of residential drilling.” Oil and gas industry groups have come out against Colorado Rising’s suit. “Pooling has not only stood on sound legal footing for nearly a century, but it is a critical step in energy development that now requires detailed communication among mineral right owners well before permits are ever filed,” Colorado Oil and Gas Association president Dan Haley said in a statement.

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