Tag: Battlement Mesa

A potentially precedent-setting fight over how close natural gas drilling should come to homes in the Western Slope community of Battlement Mesa may ultimately be decided by Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, according to the director of the state’s oil and gas conservation commission.

When Democrat Dana Baker got Republican Josh Penry to sign a pledge in 2006 to serve out a full four-year term if elected, the "idea behind that was no one would be seeking another office or other work or other endeavors during that time, that we intended to serve out the term of that office." While Penry, now State Senate minority leader, isn't resigning, he's running for governor.

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.

Battlement Mesa, a community of nearly 6,000 on Colorado’s Western Slope, is poised to live up to its name and become a legal battleground over the sticky issue of state versus local control over oil and gas drilling.

Dug up fresh, daily. THIN AIR, BIG THOUGHTS: At last week's Aspen Ideas Fest, Google's Eric Schmidt on economic evolution and the hurdle created from...

A series of key state and county meetings on a variety of controversial natural-gas drilling issues will take place this week and next in...

A dustup between politicians and landowners at an oil and gas royalty owners meeting in Grand Junction last weekend underscores the complexity of the new drilling regulations – and the heated emotions they stir in some mineral-rights holders.

It’s a valid question: If you retired to Colorado’s sunny Western Slope for the laidback mountain lifestyle but bought into a community purpose-built for workers during the oil shale boom of the 1980s, should you be shocked when drilling rigs sprout like pinon pines in your neighborhood? Battlement Mesa residents are grappling with that question these days after Denver-based Antero Resources recently struck a deal to drill up to 200 gas wells from 10 pads right in town — some within a few hundred feet of homes and the municipal golf course.