Aspen Ideas Fest audience decides natural gas boom doing more harm than good

ASPEN — After an Oxford-style debate Sunday night, environmental attorneys Deborah Goldberg and Katherine Hudson convinced 15 percent of the audience here to change their minds about hydraulic fracturing. Before the debate, only 38 percent of the audience agreed that the detriments of hydraulic fracturing are greater than its benefits but afterward, 53 percent agreed fracking does more harm than good.

North Fork Valley federal lawsuit seeks end to secret oil, gas land nomination process

The Citizens for a Healthy Community and Western Environmental Law Center’s suit aims to upend the Bureau of Land Management’s practice of keeping nominators’ names secret until after a lease is sold.

Judge sends BLM back to drawing board to consider Roan Plateau drilling alternatives

A federal judge ruled Friday that a Bush-era auction of gas leases on the Roan Plateau failed to adequately address its environmental impacts or entertain alternative, less-intrusive drilling plans.

House passes sweeping energy package brought to you by Colorado Republicans

The U.S. House passed a sweeping energy package Thursday that Alison Gannett, a farmer in the North Fork Valley, said puts “oil and gas companies first and Coloradans last.”

Conservationists blast Colorado governor’s new utilities commission appointee

The governor this week named Pam Patton, of Bayfield, to the PUC, where she joins former Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation chairman Joshua Epel and Republican appointee James Tarpey.

With fracking creeping toward schools, candidates drill down their positions

As concerns mount over oil and gas rigs inching closer to several Colorado schools, legislators are looking toward 2013 to sort out whether local controls should take a backseat to state regulations.

Longmont doesn’t want to ‘look like Erie,’ residents seek to ban fracking altogether

LONGMONT — As she kept a watchful eye on her playful toddler, Lindsay Gahn pulled out a state-issued map of town where subdivisions susceptible to oil and gas drilling were colored in red.

“When I saw this, my heart just stopped …”

Colorado kids to Encana: Don’t frack our schools

ERIE — With black whiskers painted across her cheeks, 6-year-old Olivia Cusimano roared into the plastic megaphone as if hers were the voice of the blue knotted-up balloon tiger she clutched beneath her left arm.

Fracking operation in Erie begins near two elementary schools, wakes up neighborhood

ERIE — Flaggers in orange vests stopped traffic on the parkway as a convoy of semi-trailer trucks rumbled toward Red Hawk Elementary this week hauling sound barriers to muffle a gas extraction project in this once quiet neighborhood that has left many parents, teachers and residents vexed.

Obama administration challenges oil, gas companies to drill already leased lands

Oil and gas companies are tapping only about 28 percent of federal offshore sea floor they have leased and 56 percent of the onshore land they’ve leased is also sitting idle, the Interior Department said Tuesday.