Tag: 1041 powers

Counties across Colorado are gearing up for the next major oil and gas boom, scrambling to draft local regulations for everything from visual impacts to physical setbacks of drilling equipment. But state officials are increasingly flexing their regulatory muscles, and industry representatives fear more local regs will slow the next boom before it’s in full swing.

For decades, Royal Dutch Shell – Europe’s largest energy company – has been known in Colorado as the king of oil shale research, spending an estimated $200 million on an experimental and controversial extraction process that has yet to be proven commercially viable. But Shell and its American subsidiaries have increasingly been moving into natural gas drilling in the United States, including a well permit pulled in southern Colorado that has touched off a firestorm of debate over state versus local control of drilling operations and just how much public input should be allowed.

Citizen activists on Colorado’s Western Slope are pointing to a Texas case of well-water contamination caused by oil and gas drilling activity as a prime example of what they want to avoid in this state and what regulators should be guarding against in heavily drilled Garfield County.

A grassroots group of citizens battling a major natural gas drilling proposal in their Western Slope community has been given the nod to at...

Battlement Mesa residents are once again fuming about Antero Resources natural gas drilling in the community of more than 5,000 on the state’s Western...

Garfield County Commissioner Trési Houpt Tuesday told the Colorado Independent she doesn’t have enough information to fully evaluate a proposal by Battlement Mesa residents to use county 1041 powers to regulate oil and gas drilling, but added she certainly understands their desire to pursue any avenue open to them.