ruling

Colorado oil and gas industry officials Monday were nervously eyeing Friday’s decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designating the greater sage grouse as “warranted but precluded” for protection under the Endangered Species Act.
Conservationists, meanwhile, reacted Friday with tempered enthusiasm for the ruling, which they claim means the bird must “wait in line” for [...]

A bill mandating stricter handling of oil and gas brine that was passed in 2008 by strange bedfellows Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, in the state Senate and Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, in the House was upheld by a Denver District Court judge Tuesday, according to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

Tim DeChristopher, a University of Utah student who last December allegedly won 13 Bureau of Land Management oil and gas leases for $1.7 million he never intended to pay, came up with a unique defense in U.S. District in Salt Lake City Monday: “Global warming made me do it.”
Federal judge Dee Benson was having none [...]

While conservation groups called Wednesday’s federal appeals court decision reinstating the Clinton-era roadless rule a major victory, the state of Colorado contends its own revised rule is still a far more practical way of managing the state’s 4.2 million roadless acres.

Mike King, deputy director of Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources, said Wednesday that the 2001 Clinton rule, which provided sweeping protections against road building on nearly 60 million acres of largely undeveloped public lands nationwide, did not take into consideration wildfire mitigation or other critical economic drivers.