Oil, gas drilling protested near Ellicott

ELLICOTT• Bob Voitl escaped city life three years ago to this little house on the prairie.

"It's peaceful, quiet and I can have horses," said Voitl, an emergency room nurse. On his 35 acres, he also has a campfire ring, a shooting range and a swing where he can listen to the coyotes yip while the sun sets over distant mountains.

A natural gas drilling rig and a new road for truck traffic next to his house were not part of his plan.

A Texas oil and gas company is planning to drill a test well on a neighboring lot, the latest in a long string of efforts by energy companies to scrape a dime out of El Paso County's apparently meager energy resources. Nobody has succeeded.

Residents near the drilling, which is proposed for a pasture between Bar 10 Road and Harding Farm Lane south of Ellicott, aren't happy about it. Some, including Voitl, are learning they don't own the mineral rights to their land, so the company could drill on their property whether they like it or not. And Voitl is especially unhappy about assertions by the company they can build a road through his land - whether he likes it or not.

Houston-based Etoco L.P. says the only access to the drilling site is through Voitl's land, and it will force its way through unless he agrees to a deal.

"I'm not against the exploration, using the resources, but don't tell me you're coming across my property when you have this other access," said Voitl, who lives at the corner of Bar 10 Road and Bar 10 Way. He would rather see the company come in from Harding Farm Lane to the west.

New technology known as fracturing has allowed energy companies to tap Colorado gas deposits once thought unreachable. According to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, 2008 saw more than 7,200 approved drilling permits, compared to 2,915 permits in 2004. Most development is on the Western Slope and the northern Front Range.

Despite at least 104 attempts in the past century, nobody has drilled a producing oil or gas well in El Paso County, according to the commission's records.

Over the past year and a half, Etoco has leased the mineral rights to 15,000 acres in the area, said Hal Bozeman, the company's land manager.

The company is not relying on new geologic data, but rather on optimism the fracturing technique, in which sand, water and chemicals are blasted underground to loosen trapped gas deposits, could work here.

"It looks interesting. It's more and more difficult to find projects in the United States. Companies are branching out to projects they wouldn't have looked at a few years ago," Bozeman said.

Looking for fossil fuels in an area where they haven't been found is known as wildcat drilling, which typically has a small chance of success. But that doesn't comfort residents.

"I have no problem at all with the drilling. The big thing is what it's going to do to my property value," Voitl said.
Sandy Marsh, who lives just north of Voitl, said the rural dirt roads, including Bar 10 Way, aren't built to handle trucks and heavy equipment.

"The extra traffic on that road, I think that's really going to chew up that road," Marsh said.

Ruthann Brettell moved east from Academy Boulevard when Colorado Springs development reached there. Then she moved east from Powers Boulevard when development reached there. She sees the drilling as another intrusion.

"I really like the solitude. I like the quiet," said Brettell, who lives across the street from Voitl.

Along with traffic, residents worry about their property values decreasing, being bothered by noise from a drilling rig a half-mile away and they wonder if the fracturing could impact their wells.

J. Kirk Cottrell is a paralegal working on land issues for Etoco - a "petroleum landman" in industry parlance.
"The people that object the most are the people that don't own the minerals under their own land, which I understand," Cottrell said.

As the West was settled, mineral rights were conveyed to the original ranchers and homesteaders. But as land has been passed down and subdivided and sold for houses, the mineral rights have often not been passed along. Voitl and Marsh both said they had no idea, when buying their property, they weren't buying the mineral rights.

Etoco has leased the mineral rights for both their properties from a prior owner, whom Cottrell would not identify, who retained the rights when the land was sold to developers.

The property where drilling is proposed is owned by Vera Howard, a California resident who owns the mineral rights and has signed a deal with Etoco.

The location of the well pad is in the middle of a pasture. But Cottrell said there is no way to access it from the west because of houses and obstacles. So Etoco has determined the best way is from the east - right through Voitl's yard.

"We tried every way we could to get to this property. We tried all ways," Cottrell said. "The best way to get to it is a straight line, and with the least number of disruptions."

Voitl says it would be a disruption, and he is not interested in the amount of money - probably around $1,000, based on per-acre property values - Etoco would pay him for the damage to 1.8 acres and the inconvenience, or the fact Etoco would reseed the land and move his fence.

"The constant traffic and stuff going down that road while I'm sitting out here and listening to the coyotes, I don't want that," he said.

Cottrell said he would rather have an agreement, but, if necessary, the company can force Voitl to provide access.

Colorado law says surface owners must provide access to owners of mineral rights. Cottrell said the company could ask El Paso County to make the route a public road under an old law that designates section lines, imaginary boundaries that divide 640-acre blocks, as public roads. Voitl's yard is on a section line.

The company could also file a lawsuit to try to force Voitl to allow access.

"We're in the business of finding oil and gas. We don't like to upset anyone just because someone didn't check if they were buying the mineral rights when they bought their property," Cottrell said.
Etoco hopes to drill this year.

It would take two to three weeks of work, with 10 days of round-the-clock drilling. If the company found gas, it would probably drill more wells and eventually construct a pipeline 10 miles west to Colorado Springs. Of the 15,000 acres of mineral rights it has leased, about half are state-owned land.

Of course, first the company must find gas, and it's going up against a long history of failures here.
"If you're like a college football coach and 0 for 104, you probably wouldn't stay employed. But you just never know," Bozeman said.
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