Usually you hear about municipalities paying companies or offering them steep tax breaks to come into city limits. But Longmont just paid oil and gas companies $3 million to leave. CPR energy and environment reporter Grace Hood told Colorado Matters about the deal Longmont city leaders struck Tuesday night to effectively end surface drilling.
Top Operating and Cub Creek Energy will abandon several active wells, give up a dozen future drilling sites and forfeit 80 well permits. The deal also moves one major site away from a Longmont school and over city limits to Weld County. Longmont's move is one of many local control efforts made across the Front Range following a 2016 Colorado Supreme Court decision that outlawed long-term fracking bans.
