## Facts

- Colorado regulates oil and gas development under the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Act (OGCA), administered through a state commission authorized to issue rules governing oil and gas operations.
- The commission adopted detailed statewide rules regulating hydraulic fracturing and related activities, including well construction, chemical disclosure, groundwater protection, and waste handling.
- Fort Collins, a home-rule municipality, adopted a voter-approved ordinance imposing a five-year moratorium on (1) hydraulic fracturing and (2) storage of hydraulic-fracturing waste products within city limits.
- Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA) sued for a declaratory judgment and permanent injunction, alleging the moratorium was preempted by the OGCA and state regulations.
- The district court ruled that state law impliedly preempted the moratorium and enjoined its enforcement.
- Fort Collins appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court.

## Issues

1. Whether a home-rule municipality may enforce a five-year moratorium on hydraulic fracturing and fracking-waste storage, or whether the OGCA and state regulations preempt the local measure.
2. Whether the moratorium creates an “operational conflict” with the state statutory and regulatory framework for oil and gas development.

## Decision

- The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed the district court’s judgment for COGA.
- The court held the moratorium was preempted because it operationally conflicted with the OGCA and the commission’s comprehensive regulation of hydraulic fracturing.
- The moratorium was declared invalid and unenforceable.

## Legal Principles

- Oil and gas development is a matter of mixed state and local concern in Colorado; local regulation is permissible only to the extent it does not operationally conflict with state law.
- A local enactment is preempted when it operationally conflicts with state law by materially impeding or destroying the state interest, including by prohibiting what state law authorizes.
- A time-limited moratorium that prevents state-authorized, state-regulated oil-and-gas activities from occurring within the municipality during its term functions as a prohibition and can create an operational conflict.

## Conclusion

Because the OGCA and state commission rules authorize and comprehensively regulate hydraulic fracturing, Fort Collins’s five-year moratorium prohibiting fracking and related waste storage materially impeded the state regulatory program and was therefore preempted and unenforceable.


City of Fort Collins v. Colo. Oil & Gas Ass'n, 369 P.3d 586 (Colo. 2016)