Program Description:

 

This one-hour course will examine Colorado's pipeline condemnation statutes: their history, and what precise condemnation powers they grant, especially as to the petroleum industry.

 

The course will also discuss the emerging issue of safety setbacks around petroleum and other hazardous liquid pipelines.  The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission imposes safety setbacks around oil drill wellheads.  Leaking petroleum pipelines pose similar safety and environmental dangers.  

 

This course will examine:

 

- the current absence of federal, state, or local regulations for pipeline safety setbacks;

- the emerging awareness of a need for such setbacks and voluntary guidelines;

- how to determine the appropriate size for a pipeline safety setback;

- how the need to devote land for safety setbacks can be recognized in condemnation actions; and

- the potential consequences of ignoring the need for reasonable safety setbacks.

 

Presenter Ben Cohen was the lead appellate counsel in the 2012 case of Larson v. Sinclair, where the Colorado Supreme Court upset decades of petroleum industry by ruling that C.R.S. § 38-5-105 did not confer condemnation power for petroleum pipelines

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