(Colorado News Connection) The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has released new draft rules to ensure taxpayers are not on the hook for abandoned oil and gas wells, but critics say the commission has failed to address the need to monitor wells into the future.

Kate Christensen, oil and gas campaign coordinator for 350 Colorado, said wells are plugged with concrete, which can crack. She pointed to a plugged well in Erie that was discovered to be leaking significant amounts of toxic methane close to an elementary school.

"There's another one in Broomfield that has cost the town half a million dollars," Christensen pointed out. "It was already plugged and abandoned, and started leaking methane into a neighborhood. So, these financial assurances don't take that into account at all."

Christensen argued the commission should also require companies to set aside enough money to ensure orphan wells can be fully restored. The commission's proposal allows for blanket bonds ranging from $1,500 to $15,000 per well, but Christensen noted the true reclamation costs are between $8,000 and $1.9 million. Oil and gas companies have chaffed at higher bonding requirements, and claim stricter rules could slow production and cost jobs.

Colorado currently has some 60,000 unplugged wells across the state, with just one in five producing even marginal amounts of oil and gas.

Christensen emphasized plugging wells is also an important climate-mitigation strategy to limit methane emissions, which is more than 80 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

"If we plugged just the lowest producing wells, we would cut a significant amount of methane, but it would not impact production that much," Christensen contended. "And it would become a jobs program, because plugging wells creates jobs."

UK-based think tank Carbon Tracker estimates it will cost $7 billion to plug Colorado's current slate of wells. Christensen added the commission should not just kick the can down the road for future generations.

"If we let oil and gas companies take all our resources, and leave us their mess to clean up, we are sacrificing the financial health of our state for our kids," Christensen concluded.