When It Comes to Regulating Oil and Gas, Two Counties Have Very Different Views of Local Control

New rules around oil and gas development in Colorado go into effect this January. This comes after months of debate at the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, the state’s regulatory agency, which was tasked with overhauling rules after legislation was passed in 2019. One central part of SB 181 was giving local communities more authority to regulate the industry. But, as Maeve Conran from KGNU in Boulder reports, two Front Range counties have radically different ideas of what local control means.