Influence of Emissions from Oil and Gas Development on Elevated Ozone in the Northern Colorado Front Range

Abstract:

The Northern Colorado Front Range (NCFR) region has been in exceedance of the ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) since 2004. Rapidly growing oil and natural gas (O&NG) operations in the Denver-Julesberg Basin, NNE of the Denver metropolitan area, continue to be one of the largest volatile organic compound emitting sources in the region. Trend analysis of the last 13 years of Denver/NCFR ozone monitoring from five sites does not show any statistically significant decrease in annual regulated ozone maxima despite state efforts to mitigate ozone precursor emissions. In this work, we investigate the contribution of O&NG emissions to continued exceedances of the ozone NAAQS. We use surface ozone and wind data from two sites near Boulder, Colorado, to investigate the climatology of ozone in the NCFR region. Transport analyses show a preponderance of elevated ozone events associated with transport from the O&NG operations area in the N-ESE sector, rather than from the more densely populated Denver metro area to the SE-S. On average, between the two sites, air transport from areas associated with dense O&NG operations accounts for 65% of 1-hr averaged elevated ozone (>75 ppbv), while transport from the densely populated Denver metropolitan area accounts for only 9%.