Misinformation about a possible change to the oil and gas project known as the Draco Pad has circulated in the Erie community.

A Sept. 24 hearing is scheduled for the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission to consider a request from SM Energy — the company at the helm of the Draco Pad — to remove a small amount of acreage from its drilling plan for the project. The company submitted that request in August 2025, months after the project got approval from the state commission.

The amendment the hearing is expected to address is not directly connected to the pending sale of Erie’s underground minerals to SM Energy. The Town Council voted to approve that sale in late June.

The hearing concerns a request submitted nearly a year ago “to modify the westernmost portion of its proposed drilling plan,” town spokesperson Gabi Rae told the Daily Camera. “That request was filed well before the Town and the operator began discussing the recent Council-approved agreement.”

“A whole lot of people jumped to a whole lot of conclusions,” she wrote in an email.

A post in an Erie Facebook group, made by a community member after the town issued an announcement about the hearing, said an amendment to Draco’s drilling plan would “exclude” from the project the mineral rights Erie leaders agreed to sell.

The post also said an amendment to the drilling plan “will almost certainly mean that SM Energy will be backing out of the negotiated deal with Erie.”

But ECMC spokesperson John Brown said Erie-owned mineral rights are still included in the drilling plan scheduled for review next month. And as of Tuesday morning, Erie officials said they had received no communication from SM Energy indicating the mineral rights deal is off.

“We can confirm that at this time, no such message has been relayed to us by SM Energy, the ECMC, or any other entity that may have knowledge or authority in this matter,” Rae said.

The Facebook post had more than 70 comments as of Monday afternoon. By Tuesday morning, it had been edited and the ability to comment had been disabled.

Proposed Draco changes

Approval of a drilling plan, called a drilling and spacing unit — or DSU — is just one step in the state commission’s regulatory process.

Before drilling can begin, an oil and gas operator must obtain multiple state approvals, including for a pooling application, according to Brown. A pooling application is the document that shows an operator has legal access to the underground minerals included within a drilling plan.

SM Energy’s Draco Pad received approval from the state commission in March 2025. The company filed to amend its drilling plan in August 2025, before Erie approved the mineral rights sale this June, Brown confirmed. The company has not submitted another amended DSU application since the town approved the agreement to sell its underground minerals to SM Energy.

SM Energy did, however, request an amendment to its pooling application more recently, in a document dated July 8. If approved, the edited pooling application would say there are no unleased mineral rights owned by a “Local Government” within the drilling plan for Draco.

But that amendment might have been made prematurely, with the deal to sell Erie’s mineral rights still not finalized.

In Erie, a resident petition to force a ballot question about the mineral rights deal has collected enough signatures, and if the petition isn’t successfully challenged within the next month or so, the deal could go to the November ballot, or the question could appear in a special election a few weeks later.

Looking at timeline

If voters were to ultimately reject the mineral rights sale, SM Energy would need to amend its drilling plan for Draco again, to avoid town-owned minerals.

Erie Mayor Pro Tem Brandon Bell, who voted in favor of the sale, has said he is concerned that delays caused by the petition process could prompt SM Energy to walk away from the agreement before voters have a chance to weigh in.

The company is on a tight timeline to break ground. The state commission approved the Draco Pad with a condition that pre-production work, including construction and drilling, must be completed by May 2028.

“We have a timeline we have to follow based on the contract. If the petition prevents that, then SM could back out,” Bell told the Camera last month.

As of Tuesday, SM Energy had not made any indication to town officials that it will call off the Erie deal.

It was unclear as of Tuesday how the petition process could affect the Sept. 24 hearing.

Erie would not finalize the mineral rights deal, regardless of the petition, until after a due diligence process is completed, Rae said.

“We expect to get results from our contract consultants who are working on due diligence in about a month’s time,” she added. “Those results will most likely not be made public – a lot of that is part of negotiations and the land is still technically private property until (any) deal is completed.”

SM Energy could not be reached for comment for this story.