Antero Resources

GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis will continue to pound on Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter’s more environmentally stringent oil-and-gas drilling regulations despite the fact that Ritter has pulled out of the race, according to McInnis spokesman Sean Duffy.

“Whichever Democrat is chosen [to run for governor]-– whether he’s chosen by the Democratic Party or the White House — [he or she will] have to defend the Democratic record on jobs or discuss how they believe the Democrats have been wrong,” Duffy told the Colorado Independent Monday. “So that’s a conversation they can have amongst themselves.”

Opponents of natural gas drilling in the Western Slope community of Battlement Mesa are pointing to a New Year’s Day fire on an Antero Resources well-pad south of Silt as another reason for Garfield County officials to reject the Denver-based company’s proposal to drill up to 200 wells in their town of 5,000.
County health officials, [...]

The top doc for a nonprofit group pushing health impact studies as part of the public decision-making process on major development projects recently had high praise for the Garfield County commissioners, who decided they may be able to fund such a study in the community of Battlement Mesa.

The Garfield County commissioners Wednesday indicated their willingness to not only have a health impact assessment conducted in the community of Battlement Mesa, where Antero Resources wants to drill 200 natural gas well, but also offered to fund such a study.

Sorry, kids, that’s not a swing set.
Oil rigs may become part of a public park near the town of Silt on Colorado’s Western Slope if the town, Garfield County, the Aspen Valley Land Trust and Antero Resources – a natural gas production company – can work out a deal with landowner the Dixon Water Foundation, [...]

Garfield County public health officials believe a relatively untested type of health impact study could be a valuable tool in assessing the risks of natural gas drilling in the heart of the Battlement Mesa retirement community on Colorado’s Western Slope.

A group of citizen activists in the Western Slope retirement community of Battlement Mesa is hoping a type of health-impact study used successfully in the oil fields of Alaska’s North Slope can help them curtail pollution, traffic and noise from a looming natural gas drilling plan in their Garfield County town of 5,000.

They have their work cut out for them. In conversations with the Colorado Independent, citizens say they have little faith that county commissioners elected to protect public health but backed by oil and gas money will put residents’ interests before those of the energy companies.

A potentially precedent-setting fight over how close natural gas drilling should come to homes in the Western Slope community of Battlement Mesa may ultimately be decided by Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, according to the director of the state’s oil and gas conservation commission.

Oil and gas companies fought the fees at every turn, in part leery of the precedent it might set not only for other gas-rich counties in Colorado, but also around the nation. The possibility of impact fees quickly became a campaign issue in neighboring Garfield County during the 2008 county commissioner election.

Battlement Mesa, a community of nearly 6,000 on Colorado’s Western Slope, is poised to live up to its name and become a legal battleground over the sticky issue of state versus local control over oil and gas drilling.