Colorado’s oil and gas industry will need to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides, which contribute to smog along the Front Range, under new rules that state air-pollution regulators are calling a bold plan.

However, critics of the new regulations say they don’t go far enough in requiring the oil and gas industry, which is one of the largest sources of nitrogen oxides, to cut emissions. And as a result, Colorado once again will fail to meet federal air quality standards and will face the consequences imposed on residents and businesses.

And those who advocated for more stringent regulations on behalf of people who live and work in the most polluted areas of the state said the new rules fail those communities.

The new emissions rules, approved Friday by the state’s Air Quality Control Commission, will require oil and gas companies to reduce nitrogen oxides emissions during the summer months when pollution is at its highest levels. Companies also will have to reduce emissions during fracking and cut emissions from stationary engines, including engines in large equipment parked at drilling sites.

Dan Haley, president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, said the industry already has taken steps to reduce nitrogen oxides emissions and will find innovative ways to meet the new requirements.

“Colorado has among the toughest air quality rules for oil and natural gas development in the nation, and those rules just got even tougher,” Haley said in a news release.

Haley pushed back on further regulation, saying Colorado’s ozone problem is closely tied to weather and that more rules aren’t likely to move the Front Range any closer to achieving its ozone reduction goals.

The rules were written because of a federal requirement for Colorado to create a “state implementation plan,” which is a road map for moving the state into compliance with federal air quality standards.

The state wrote a plan last year to outline steps for meeting the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2008 standard for ozone pollution. But air quality regulators were forced to rework portions of that plan after the Air Pollution Control Division admitted it miscalculated how much pollution the oil and gas industry spews into the air. Those emissions of nitrogen oxides from drilling and fracking were more than double what the division first estimated.

So the rules approved Friday mostly addressed the oil and gas industry.

Colorado for years has missed two sets of goals for air quality established by the EPA, and in 2022 the nine-county northern Front Range region was designated as a severe violator when it comes to air pollution.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said in a news release that the new rules will help the state meet the 2008 goal and will help it move closer to meeting a stricter 2015 goal to curb ozone pollution, although everyone acknowledges Colorado will miss the 2015 goal and the state will not be back in the EPA’s good graces for years to come.

“Colorado has to work extra hard to reduce ozone pollution because of the state’s topography, but we are up to the task,” Michael Ogletree, the director of the state health department’s Air Pollution Control Division, said in a news release. “These new measures demonstrate our commitment to improving our air quality, protecting communities overburdened by pollution and making sure companies are doing their part, too.”

Air pollution regulators said they went “above and beyond federal requirements by conducting environmental justice analyses” when writing the new rules.

“The state may have drafted this plan, but community members made it really shine. They helped us add in even more ways to reduce ozone pollution,” Trisha Oeth, Colorado’s director of environmental health and protection, said in the news release. “Our policies are stronger when we work together with a diverse set of stakeholders. We all share the goal of making sure every Coloradan has clean air to breathe.”

However, EarthJustice, an organization that provides legal representation for environmental advocates, warned the commission in an 11-page letter it would fail to achieve environmental equity if the plan was approved.

That’s exactly what happened, said Ean Thomas Tafoya, executive director of GreenLatinos Colorado, one of five environmental organizations represented by EarthJustice in the letter.

“Once again the AQCC fails its mission to protect public health by authorizing a plan that will undermine our ability to clean up our air,” Tafoya said.

The problem with the air commission’s plan, as far as environmental justice, is how it regulates engines at fracking and drilling sites, said Rebecca Curry, an EarthJustice lawyer based in Colorado.

Engines only have to become cleaner in areas defined as “cumulatively impacted” rather than disproportionately impacted, which is a much broader area in Colorado.

“They’ve essentially required these cleaner engines but they’re in areas where there hasn’t been a new permit issued in two years,” Curry said.

Environmentalists also questioned how the nitrogen oxides emissions will be counted under the new plan.

The air quality commission approved something known as “intensity verification,” which requires oil and gas companies to reduce emissions created in a set unit of production rather than placing a cap on total emissions at a drilling site.

So a company could limit its emissions on every barrel of oil produced, but if it increases its production, then its emissions will increase, too, Tafoya said.

“It doesn’t actually stop you from producing more and more and more,” he said. “If you reduce emissions per unit but make more units, then you’re still increasing pollution.”

The state already put an intensity verification rule in place for methane emissions from the oil and gas industry, but after two years it’s still undetermined whether it actually reduces pollution, said Andrew Klooster, a Colorado field advocate with Earthworks.

The state also hasn’t figured out how to enforce the methane intensity rules, he said. So it’s unlikely there’s any kind of enforcement plan for nitrogen oxides emissions.

“It’s kind of questionable to what it really achieves,” he said.

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