Northern Colorado residents fight a Kerr McGee plant

Plans by Kerr McGee to build a natural gas compressor station near a northern Colorado town are being met with opposition.

Residents of the town of Milliken gathered this week to voice their opposition and as the Greeley Tribune reported, the meeting was “testy and combative.”

The site of the proposed plant is owned by Oxy subsidiary whose representatives held the meeting that turned into a question-and-answer session.

Concerns of noise, atmospheric pollution and even explosion were floated during the meeting, which was monitored by town administrator Tim Singewald.

Singewald expressed a general feeling that the concern was somewhat overblown when reached by phone this week, but did say there was recourse the town could take if it decided to make it more difficult or even impossible for KerrMcgee to build the plant.

“Everything has to be approved,” Singewald said. “It’d be a (land) use outside of the norm, so it’d have to go through the planning commission and be approved by the board. There’s ways you can get involved and make it a little more concerning.”

Singewald didn’t seem to think that would be necessary.

An Oxy representative, Kristn Shults, responded to a request for comment via email with a consistent approach to that taken by the representatives in town last Tuesday.

“We appreciate the feedback received from the community during the community meeting on December 10,” Shults wrote. “As communicated during the meeting, our teams are committed to continuously improving the safety of our operations and engaging with communities and all stakeholders. The proposed compressor station is in the very early planning stages, and the valuable feedback collected at the community meeting allows us to better understand and take into account the community’s thoughts as we evaluate the project.”

The compressor station is a kind of local waypoint for natural gas production. It serves to prepare and charge drilled gas from nearby wells on its way to the larger pipeline.

The reason given for potentially building the station in this northern extremity of the town — as opposed to out in the county, farther away from residences — is twofold. One, representatives explained, they already own the land; and two, it’s appropriately located relative to a number of existing drilling locations.

Source: Greeley Tribune