{"id":221252,"date":"2026-06-17T10:10:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T10:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/221252\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T10:10:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T10:10:07","slug":"split-vote-of-erie-town-council-rejects-deal-tied-to-draco-oil-and-gas-project-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/221252\/","title":{"rendered":"Split vote of Erie Town Council rejects deal tied to Draco oil and gas project"},"content":{"rendered":"

With a\u00a0split vote of the Erie Town Council on Tuesday night,\u00a0a potential deal<\/a> with oil and gas operator SM Energy to hand over underground, town-owned mineral rights within the drilling area for the company\u2019s planned Draco Pad project has failed.<\/p>\n

The vote was 3-3, with Erie Mayor Andrew Moore, Mayor Pro Tem Brandon Bell and Councilmember John Mortellaro voting in favor of the agreement.<\/p>\n

Councilmembers Emily Baer, Brian O\u2019Connor and Anil Pesaramelli voted against, while Councilmember Dan Hoback was absent from Tuesday night\u2019s meeting for what he described as a family obligation.<\/p>\n

The Draco project is designed to include 26 wells, drilled from a pad in unincorporated Weld County before extending over 7,000 feet underground, turning horizontally and running west for more than 4 miles beneath portions of Erie and unincorporated Boulder County.\n<\/p>\n

The Draco project is expected to still move forward. But with the failure of the potential deal to win a Town Council vote, the Draco project will have to adjust its drilling plan to avoid the town\u2019s minerals, the town said in a news release Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

Had the potential deal gone forward, Erie could have received more than $21 million in combined cash and future revenue, in addition to owning new land and seeing closures of certain wells, according to earlier town information.<\/p>\n

Erie officials have said they were first contacted in spring 2025 by Civitas Resources \u2014 which earlier this year merged with SM Energy Company \u2014 about acquiring Erie\u2019s mineral rights within the proposed drilling area for Draco. Mineral rights allow their owners to access and extract underground resources or lease and sell that access.<\/p>\n

Civitas\u2019 application for the roughly 4,000-acre underground drilling area for the Draco Pad was approved in March 2025 by the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission. But before drilling can begin, SM Energy must demonstrate it has access to the underground mineral resources included within the approved plan to secure a drilling permit from the commission.<\/p>\n

Under the agreement, Erie would have exchanged what town officials have said are about 180 acres of its unleased mineral rights within the drilling area. In return, the town would have received three parcels of land totaling about 160 acres on County Line Road, a $4.5 million cash payment and 3% of production revenue for the lifespan of the Draco project. Erie officials had estimated that revenue share could exceed $17 million over the next 20 years or more.<\/p>\n

The vote Tuesday night happened in the wake of monthslong conversation about the potential deal. Opposition to the agreement with SM Energy \u2014 including some council members and Erie residents \u2014 has argued<\/a> that too much of that discussion has occurred in executive session, a type of meeting closed to the public that can be reserved for the town\u2019s legal matters.<\/p>\n

In a written statement from Hoback that appeared in a document tied to Tuesday\u2019s meeting, he said: \u201cFor the last six months, Erie Town Council has been negotiating behind closed doors for the sale of its mineral rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking toward Erie residents, Hoback\u2019s statement added: \u201cYou came out in person both in council chambers and on the street, in emails, and in social media. The message has been clear. Residents are broadly and strongly opposed to the sale of the town\u2019s mineral rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story may be updated with more details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With a\u00a0split vote of the Erie Town Council on Tuesday night,\u00a0a potential deal with oil and gas operator…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1675,60,1676,7250,6838,136,138,137,1677,241,182,139,68090,50,1680],"class_list":["post-221252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-boulder-county","tag-business","tag-colorado","tag-colorado-news","tag-east-county","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-front-range","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-oil-and-gas","tag-politics","tag-weld-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}