drilling regulations

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 [...]

Has Democratic candidate for governor John Hickenlooper managed already to surrender campaign narrative control to GOP rival Scott McInnis? Maybe. Progressive analyst and talk show host David Sirota is fed up these days with the way Democrats seem to be governing in the interests of corporations. He’s had enough, for example, of the health care [...]

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper reportedly almost lost a finger working as a petroleum geologist in the gas patches of Colorado’s Western Slope in the 1980s. Now, according to some environmentalists, as the state’s Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate Hickenlooper is in effect giving the finger to supporters of tougher new drilling regulations that went into effect last spring.

State Rep. Kathleen Curry, who recently stunned political observers with her switch from Democrat to Independent, told the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel she doesn’t think Gov. Bill Ritter pushing through environmentally tougher oil and gas drilling regulations last spring led to his decision Wednesday not to seek a second term. She did, however, say the [...]

Continuing to ignore global economic conditions precipitated in part by eight years of Republican economic policies, state Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, is still blaming the Ritter administration for a natural gas bust that industry executives say is about to turn around.

The resignation of Meg Collins as president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA) has touched off speculation in conservation circles that the state’s leading trade group for the oil and gas industry was dissatisfied with the worsening regulatory climate for energy extraction in Colorado.
Collins, who stepped down last week to “pursue other interest,” [...]

Most experts agree, the factors shaping the 2010 election on Colorado’s Western Slope – and to a lesser degree the rest of the state – boil down to a version of that old James Carville chestnut: “It’s the energy economy, stupid.”

Garfield County, the so-called “ground zero” of the late, great oil and gas boom, will be the scene of a rally in support of the more stringent drilling regulations currently being debated in the Statehouse in Denver.