Colorado’s Front Range air quality problem is real. The smog often obstructs our view of the state’s natural beauty while impacting health conditions.

Yet even as regulators target oil and gas development as the presumed source, the real ozone culprits are Colorado’s natural geography and out-of-state pollution — not the industry they’re eager to blame.

As The Gazette reported recently, the Air Quality Control Commission voted 7-2 to mandate an additional 50% cut in nitrogen-oxide emissions from oil and gas operations by 2030 — just five years from now. Nitrogen-oxide combines with volatile organic compounds in the air to form toxic ozone.

On paper, the goal is to meet tighter EPA ozone standards — ratcheted down from 84 parts per billion in 1997 to 70ppb in 2015. Colorado meets the 1997 standards, but the limit set in 2015 — based on a three-year average from 2024-2026 — currently remains out of reach.

Oil and gas makes for a convenient scapegoat, but the industry doesn’t drive Denver’s ozone problem. The Polis administration’s own State Implementation Plan indicates less than 4% of Denver-area ozone comes from oil and gas. Regional monitoring data from the National Renewable Energy Lab (now National Laboratory of the Rockies) and Fort Collins West confirms single-digit contributions across the region.

Meanwhile, the Regional Air Quality Council estimates up to two-thirds of our ozone comes from “background concentrations” — pollution blowing into the North Front Range from out-of-state sources, which gets supercharged by geography and climate.

Morning winds push pollutants upslope toward the mountains; overnight winds toss them back down to the Front Range — creating a stagnant pocket where pollutants accumulate and recirculate.

The seasons exacerbate the problem. Summer heat, intense sunlight and low humidity generate more ozone. Winter brings temperature inversions that trap pollutants near the ground as dry air cranks up the reactivity of ozone-causing compounds.

Wildfires make it worse, too. The same factors that spread fires farther and wider send smoke that contributes substantially to ozone on “wildfire days.”

In a recent Perspective for The Gazette, Barney Strobel — a chemical engineer who spent over a decade as a field engineer in air-pollution compliance — identified 19 “wildfire days” in 2024 that, if responsibly removed from the daily count, would bring the annual total near the 2015 standard.

Federal law allows removing such anomalies, treating “wildfire days” almost like jury selection. That seems like a prudent step.

Similarly, as The Gazette reports, industry groups have petitioned Gov. Jared Polis to request federal waivers for such “imported” pollution to avoid the impending air quality downgrade and more stringent regulations.

For reasons we can’t quite fathom, regulators refused. Reportedly, Polis believes the mandates will drastically improve air quality and contribute to the state’s anti-ozone efforts. It’s hard to see how that’s the case when oil and gas contributes such a small proportion to the problem.

None of the factors we’ve discussed can be controlled by regulators, no matter how much they want to believe otherwise. They could seek federal waivers for the two-thirds of ozone blowing in from elsewhere. They could exclude wildfire anomalies as law allows.

Instead, they’re hammering an industry responsible for a fraction of the pollution — because oil and gas makes a politically convenient fall guy, even when the data say otherwise.

Where are the regulators who will follow the science?