Posts by David O. Williams

Stepped-up natural gas drilling in northwestern Colorado can ripple-effect Denver politics, where wrangling over new drilling regulations last week took an ugly turn. But the ramifications for the nation’s largest deer and elk herds that roam there are often overlooked.
While humans like Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and state Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry – current [...]

New Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA) President Tisha Conoly Schuller need look no farther away than New Mexico for an example of what can happen to the head of a state’s powerful industry lobby if they stray too far from the party line.
Last week, New Mexico Oil and Gas Association President Bob Gallagher said [...]

The debate over the health of the natural gas industry will shape the 2010 campaign for the governor’s office, key seats in the state legislature and even local-level county commissioner races. Unsurprisingly, there are fundamental disagreements about what is happening on the ground in gas country.

Green investment groups representing shareholders in the cleaner-than-coal natural gas industry are pressuring the nation’s major drilling companies to come clean on the process of hydraulic fracturing, which is the subject of a controversial bill introduced last summer by Colorado Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis.

Clearly, renewable energy standards (RES) – adopted by nearly 30 states, including Colorado – work. That’s the message at least that’s coming from the American Wind Energy Association, according to the New York Times.

Conservationists appear to be taking a more subtle approach to reforming the fossil-fuel-fixated ways of Colorado’s rural electric associations (REAs) this legislative session, introducing a bill that would daylight the co-op’s board of director elections, but not offering much more in terms of transformative legislation.

In an e-Alert Thursday from coloradosenatenews.com — a blast from the Republican state Senate minority — Sen. Mike Kopp, R-Littleton, gushed about the lack of progress on fixing 125 bridges around the state deemed structurally deficient by the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT).
Kopp described his “gotcha” moment when he nailed CDOT chief Russ George on [...]

Gov. Bill Ritter Thursday praised the feds for choosing to bury tons of mercury currently languishing in Tennessee deep in the heart of Texas instead at the Grand Junction Disposal Site in Mesa County.

A bill mandating stricter handling of oil and gas brine that was passed in 2008 by strange bedfellows Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, in the state Senate and Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, in the House was upheld by a Denver District Court judge Tuesday, according to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

A 30-megawatt wind-energy project in northeastern Colorado with the potential to expand to 650 megawatts will get $2.5 million in stimulus funds, according to a joint release Thursday from Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet.