Oil And Gas

The conservative Astroturf group that spent thousands to swing the Longmont City Council back to the right last November and keep the Garfield County commissioner board in the oil and gas camp in 2008 has filed a lawsuit in Montana to overturn that state’s 98-year-old ban on corporate spending on political campaigns.

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 [...]

There is thoughtful skepticism and then there is today’s Republican Study Committee release mocking the EPA’s finding that greenhouse emissions threaten human health. Reading this peacock of a press release, you would think that battling measures meant to combat climate change was the only way to create jobs? Wait, is it?

AVON — Colorado mountaineer Aron Ralston, famous for a bouldering mishap in Utah which he survived by amputating his own forearm, has been touring the state with other recreation proponents pushing for a huge new wilderness proposal called Hidden Gems.
“The Hidden Gems Wilderness Proposal would counteract the increasing pressures of extractive development and motorized use,” [...]

A coalition of environmental groups looking to drum up local support for a huge new wilderness bill that could protect up to 450,000 acres of national forest land in Colorado from oil and gas production, timber sales and mining have stirred up opposition from an unlikely quarter.
Mountain bikers, snowmobilers, dirt bikers and other off-road enthusiasts [...]

Thursday’s court filing by the Department of Justice in the 10th Circuit Court in Wyoming, which has federal jurisdiction over Colorado, indicating the DOJ will appeal two previous rulings against the 2001 Clinton roadless rule is a strong sign which way the Obama administration is leaning on the issue.
President Obama, as both an Illinois senator [...]

Two Democrats who lost out in a nasty election for the Garfield County board of commissioners last year say the main reason they were targeted by the oil and gas industry was something that happened earlier in 2008 in neighboring Rio Blanco County.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative under the Bush administration struck a secret deal with the European Union that could open up a door for foreign ownership of liquefied natural gas terminals and other dangerous chemical and energy facilities. The agreement could also create conditions in which federal, state and local regulations affecting those facilities could be challenged as barriers to international trade.

Environmentalists won’t allow President Obama to sit on the bench of sports escapism for even a minute without reminding him of his obligations to reject the Bush administration’s eight-year full-court press on America’s national forests.

News this week that Colorado could one day be home to the nation’s largest concentrated solar power plant — a facility of at least 200 megawatts near Pueblo — comes as welcome news to an energy sector faltering right along with the rest of the economy.

But some critics say continuing to artificially mandate renewable energy simply drives up the price of coal- and gas-generated electricity, which still provides the vast majority of power in Colorado.