The last time an oil company drilled near East Alameda Avenue and Powhaton Road, Richard Nixon was president and Barack Obama wasn’t yet a teenager.

Since a company called Chandler and Associates poked that well into the desolate plains in 1972, oil and gas exploration in the area has been minimal. Few drillers have even explored the vast fields near new subdivisions like Murphy Creek, Tollgate Crossing and Cross Creek. And the few wells drilled in the early 1970s were shut off within a couple years.

But that’s expected to change in the coming months.

Hoping to tap the Niobrara formation — a fertile oil and natural gas field under much of the eastern plains — a Texas-based oil company applied last month to drill up to 36 wells in a 30-square-mile patch of land near Aurora’s eastern edge. The area stretches from Gun Club Road east to Watkins Road and from East Yale Avenue north to East Colfax Avenue. Anadarko Petroleum also hopes to drill as many as 24 other wells around rural Arapahoe County.

The plan means that if every proposed piece of land proves fruitful, Anadarko would drill up to 50 wells in Arapahoe County.

Andarko’s plan is set to go before a Colorado Oil and Gas Commission hearing in October.

Brian Cain, a spokesman for Anadarko, said the company hopes to have two test wells drilled in the area before the end of the year. The company is already active in the area, with more than 5,000 wells operating in the Denver-Julesburg basin, including some near the Aurora line in Adams County.

State officials say Anadarko’s plans are part of an increased focus on the Niobrara, which could lead to a boom in energy development on the plains near metro Denver.

But county officials say drilling is coming faster to Arapahoe County than they were prepared for.

“We do not have the proper regulations in place right now at the county level,” said County Commissioner Frank Weddig.

Because drilling has been so uncommon in Arapahoe County, Weddig said local lawmakers never drafted regulations to deal with the issue. Last spring, they started work on a set of regulations that will likely include an impact fee levied on drillers to cover the cost of fixing damage to area roads.

That fee is important, Weddig said, because state severance tax dollars, which energy developers pay, often don’t trickle down to counties until well after rig trucks and other heavy machinery have battered county roads.

Some of the criticism of drilling near metro Denver has focused on fracking, the controversial form of oil and gas exploration that is used on most wells in the region.

Weddig said he isn’t too worried about fracking, but he is concerned about increased traffic, particularly on East Jewell Avenue between Gun Club Road and Watkins Road.

That stretch of road runs along six possible drilling plots laid out by the state’s Oil and Gas Commission. Anadarko’s plan calls for drilling on five of those six.

Weddig said that stretch of Jewell and other roads in the area are only “marginal paved roads” built to handle a low level of traffic.

“They were never intended to handle the kind of truck traffic that results from this kind of activity,” he said.

But an impact fee, along with plans to have county officials monitor drilling activity, aren’t in place yet, Weddig said, because drilling appears to be coming to Arapahoe County faster than some expected.

“We never expected this type of operation to occur quite to the extent its going to occur in Arapahoe County,” Weddig said.

Cain said Anadarko takes safety seriously and has paid millions in local taxes over the years.

“Protecting public health and the environment are central to our operations,” he said.

Statewide, he said Anadarko has paid more than $440 million in taxes, royalties and salaries during the past four years and invested an additional $1.5 billion in capital spending during that same period.

Arapahoe County isn’t alone in its scramble to deal with increased energy development.

Andy Karsian, legislative coordinator at Colorado Counties Inc., which lobbies on behalf of the state’s counties, said several urban counties have dealt in recent years with increased drilling in places where it never happened before.

“It’s the rural parts of the urban counties, but we are also seeing permits and drilling occur near cities along the Front Range now,” Karsian said.

Karsian said El Paso, Elbert, Douglas and Adams counties have all dealt with the issue.

In other parts of the state, such as Weld County or some counties along the Western Slope, energy development has been around for years so the counties have ample experience and lengthy regulations already in place to deal with land use and other matters.

In a place like Arapahoe County, where drilling could be close to densely-populated residential areas, the concerns tend to center on things like dust and noise, he said.   

Arapahoe County Commissioner Nancy Sharpe said those are exactly the things she’s concerned about.

“We think it is going to have some significant impacts in the county,” Sharpe said.

Still, state officials say drilling in urban areas is actually fairly common.

Tom Kerr, permit manager for the at Colorado Oil and Gas Commission, said there are wells very close to the city of Brighton as well as some wells within the city limits of Thornton, Longmont and Laffayette.

“There is actually quite a bit of drilling in the urban environments,” he said.

Typically, the drilling occurs in neighborhoods of ranchettes, where homes sit on larger lots than in a subdivision. If it occurs near homes, the Arapahoe County drilling will likely occur in that type of area, he said.

But, he said, it all depends on whether drillers find oil and gas when they poke their first few test holes in Arapahoe County.

“If the tests prove productive there will be more,” he said.

It’s that possibility of more drilling that has county officials nervous.

“We want to make sure we are getting this process through our system in a very timely manor,” Sharpe said. “There is a degree of urgency.”