Piceance Basin

Stepped-up natural gas drilling in northwestern Colorado can ripple-effect Denver politics, where wrangling over new drilling regulations last week took an ugly turn. But the ramifications for the nation’s largest deer and elk herds that roam there are often overlooked.
While humans like Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and state Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry – current [...]

Colorado oil and gas regulators have admitted to the Colorado Independent they’re spread too thin to handle a new set of EPA rules if proposed federal hydraulic fracturing legislation is passed by Congress, but a new ProPublica investigation suggests staffing may even be inadequate to handle current levels of state oversight.

The Denver metro area had T-REX, a massive, $1.67 billion freeway and mass transit expansion that sort of eased traffic congestion. Now the natural gas fields of Colorado have REX, or Rockies Express Pipeline, which for a mere $6.7 billion should greatly free up a decade-long capacity logjam that has plagued the local oil and [...]