Rio Blanco County

Impact fees assessed against equipment used by oil and gas companies in Rio Blanco County – most notably ExxonMobil – took a big hit this week when the Colorado Supreme Court Monday rejected a county request to rehear the case.
Rio Blanco County impact fees are unique in the nation and viewed by some observers as [...]

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.

The ongoing downturn in natural gas drilling on Colorado’s Western Slope is taking a toll on local school districts, according to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, which cites a 13-percent drop in students in Garfield County School District No. 16, which serves Parachute and Battlement Mesa.
That decline in enrollment matches a 13-percent decline in De [...]

Oil and gas drilling permits in Colorado in 2009 are on pace to slightly top 2005 numbers, according an analysis by the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, but much of that activity came as part of a rush in March to file before new, environmentally stricter drilling regulations went into place April 1.

Oil and gas companies fought the fees at every turn, in part leery of the precedent it might set not only for other gas-rich counties in Colorado, but also around the nation. The possibility of impact fees quickly became a campaign issue in neighboring Garfield County during the 2008 county commissioner election.

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, four nuclear devices were exploded underground on Colorado’s Western Slope in an effort to free up commercially marketable amounts of natural gas from dense sandstone formations.

Even as domestic drilling for natural gas has dropped off dramatically due to the recession, more and more states and local governments are looking to up taxes on the industry in order to bolster desperately depleted budgets.

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.