Daily Camera (Boulder): East Boulder County landowners are sharply questioning whether a Denver energy company with plans to drill nearby is meeting the spirit of a state regulation designed to encourage public participation in proposed drilling plans.

Two meetings held last week, though described as public, were invite-only.

“Anybody should be allowed to go and neither of those two meetings was public,” said Nanner Fisher, owner of Orvilla West Farm. The farm is in the middle of the drilling area, but Fisher was not allowed inside the in-person meeting on Wednesday at Vinelife Church in Longmont. “I think they need to have two real public meetings that are actually posted as public meetings somewhere.”

But state regulators on Monday said the definition of “public” differs when a private company is leading the planning process, as is the case with Crestone Peak Resources which is soliciting some input from landowners for its plan to drill in a 12-square mile swath of eastern Boulder County.

Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission spokesman Todd Hartman said that the state’s regulations do not require a “public meeting” and the state agreed that Crestone’s two meetings sufficiently fulfilled the first formal stakeholder outreach and engagement period between Oct. 16 and Nov. 3.

Hartman said the half-mile radius was a “significantly greater area than the 1,000-foot notification required for oil and gas projects” in large urban mitigation areas.

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