Natural Gas

Gov. Bill Ritter’s Colorado Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act brought together some strange bedfellows this morning in the west foyer of the State Capitol in Denver, with frequent Ritter energy-policy critic Sen. Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, joining in a press conference to announce the bill.

Democrats differ widely on whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should be able to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as a form of air pollution under the Clean Air Act, and the rift seems to be mostly geographical and based on how much coal a state contains.

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.

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 [...]

The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel on Sunday did a good job of painting the big picture in terms of the massive scale of energy resources under the arid ground of western Colorado and eastern Utah in an area dubbed “Energy Alley.”
The 150-mile stretch of Interstate 70 between Rifle, Colo., and Green River, Utah, sits atop [...]

In a pre-holiday rush, Xcel Energy rate increase cases are flying fast and furiously before the Colorado Public Utilities Commission these days.
The PUC Wednesday essentially re-opened Xcel’s electricity rate case that appeared settled earlier this month, putting it back on the agenda for Tuesday of next week because of unexpected delays in getting the Comanche [...]

Analysts are calling ExxonMobil’s $31 billion acquisition of natural-gas giant XTO Energy a much safer bet than a similar leap made by energy conglomerate ConocoPhillips into natural-gas production when it purchased Burlington Resources for $36 billion in 2005.

Some water experts warn the upper Colorado River is an endangered species if current residential growth patterns and water consumption patterns continue along the state’s Front Range, and they’re increasingly concerned proposed energy production on the Western Slope will accelerate its demise.

“I hope America can’t come here and trash out my country here to support the current [oil shale] industry,” said one Routt County commissioner.

Former U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, a six-time Republican congressman representing Colorado’s Western Slope, would like to turn the state’s prime mountain playgrounds into something more closely resembling the industrialized environs of Pennsylvania.
At least that’s our interpretation of a Grand Junction Daily Sentinel story in which McInnis praises the “drill, baby, drill” policies of Democratic Pennsylvania [...]