The images paired above do not begin to do justice to the issue of long abandoned oil and gas facilities in Colorado. Earthworks conducts extensive field surveys of producing, temporarily shut down, and abandoned facilities around the country. Their optical gas imaging using FLIR camera technology illustrates the continued venting from supposedly inactive units. These screen captures were taken from one of the videos posted below.

This highlights the critical need for comprehensive financial assurance regulation, which is being discussed at the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in January and February of 2022. Public comment opportunities are scheduled and information on that can be found in this previous blog post.

These are the full YouTube videos of Earthworks: