Tag: Public Lands

Oil and gas companies are tapping only about 28 percent of federal offshore sea floor they have leased and 56 percent of the onshore land they’ve leased is also sitting idle, the Interior Department said Tuesday.

A trio of bills designed to invigorate drilling on public lands has a watchdog group casting U.S. Reps. Scott Tipton, Doug Lamborn and Mike Coffman as “the Three Stooges for the oil and gas industry.”

Vail Resorts has announced it has teamed with the Colorado Environmental Coalition and other conservation groups in supporting U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colorado, and U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colorado, who are seeking better protection and management of up to 175,000 acres of ecologically important lands in Eagle and Summit counties, where Vail Resorts operates.

A plan to protect more than 60,000 acres in southwestern Colorado reached the Public Lands and Forests Subcommittee last week where U.S. Sen. Mark Udall emphasized how public lands can be a boon to the economy

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack Friday reinstated a year-long “time out” on road building on more than 58 million acres of public lands in 39...

A proposal to stiffen state requirements for cleaning up uranium processing facilities and notifying area residents of groundwater contamination passed on second reading in...

Falling natural gas prices and more stringent state drilling regulations won’t deter some energy companies from going full bore on Colorado’s Western Slope, but conservation groups hope their lawsuit in U.S. District Court will at least block drilling on the Roan Plateau near Rifle.

A new set of state rules for managing millions of acres of roadless public lands in Colorado — rules critics say are loaded with loopholes for oil and gas drilling, logging and ski-area expansion — are now out of the public arena and expected to be finalized sometime next year.

The battle over management of Colorado's 4.4 million acres has abruptly intensified, after years of federal intervention, state resistance and legal wrangling dating back to the final days of the Clinton administration. At stake, according to a coalition of environmental groups fighting to protect roadless areas, is whether wide swaths of relatively unscathed national forest will be made more accessible to motorized vehicles, allowing incursion by logging companies, oil and gas drilling, construction of water pipelines and power transmission lines, and expansion by the state's ski industry.