Accessing Flexibility: A Historical Institutional Analysis of Water Use for Oil and Gas Development in Colorado

ABSTRACT

US Mountain West Water access and allocation institutions have a history of adapting policy and practice to increase flexibility for diverse water uses. We examine how flexible access has developed over time and space by operationalizing the historical institutional (HI) theoretical and methodological framework. We trace historical water access for oil and gas (OG) development in Colorado, working from contemporary water right data to examine historical critical events, policies, and political contexts. OG water use has iteratively shaped water governance institutions in the top OG producing regions of Colorado, Weld, and Garfield Counties. The analysis suggests that to more accurately capture institutional change and continuity in resource allocation systems, an analysis of informal institutions is an essential theoretical contribution to the HI framework. While increased flexibility makes multiple uses easier, policies favor the most economically lucrative beneficial uses and generate issues of transparency, an important consideration for the public’s resource. Future practices of flexibility are contingent on market structures and institutional access mechanisms shaped during previous government policy processes, illuminating the value of the HI framework to inform future water policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Colorado
• equity
• flexibility
• historical institutional
• oil and gas
• water policy

Acknowledgments

We sincerely appreciate the time and energy of Dr. Lynn Hempel. This manuscript would not have come to fruition without her intellectual guidance. We want to express gratitude to the Colorado’s Division of Water Resources. We enlisted several employees in multiple divisions to gain access to water use data. They sat with us in sometimes long, arduous meetings to make sure we understood the legalities of water right administration.

Notes

Empire Lodge Homeowners’ Association v. Moyer. 2001.

Once a horizontal well is drilled approximately 5,000 feet deep, hydraulic fracturing injects a mixture of water, sand and a combination of different chemicals into a targeted OG bearing formation. High injection pressures cause the rock to fracture and release OG (Cheremisinoff and Davletshin 2015).

SWSPs are short-term augmentation plans utilized when an individual or company has a water right application being reviewed by the water court. Water rights, or decrees, are a legal document adjudicated by the state water court that defines a user’s right to put a particular amount of water from a specific location to beneficial use.

For context, one acre foot will supply two average families for a year.

For details on state water agencies and formal decision-making entities: http://water.state.co.us/Home/WaterLinks/Pages/WaterRelatedStateAgencies.aspx

The Citizen’s Guide to Colorado Water Law provides the basics of Colorado water law and administrative processes: https://www.yourwatercolorado.org/cfwe-education/water-is/water-law.

Synthetics are defined as any fuel engineered as a substitute for oil to power American’s warships, airplanes, tanks, and automobiles.

Additional information

Funding

The research was conducted under the AirWaterGas Sustainability Research Network (http://airwatergas.org/) funded in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CBET-1240584. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.