When nothing is better than something

Touched Up Oil-and-Gas Property Rights Bill Touches Off an Outcry

By Ken Wright, 4-07-06

It started out with seemingly reasonable aims, but it has ended up with the very folks who pushed for it clamoring for its defeat, and the oil and gas industry advocating for its passing with radio ads across western Colorado.

Pushed for two years by Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison, the “Surface Owners’ Protection Act” for Colorado has continually failed under stiff opposition from the state’s strong oil and gas industry. In Curry’s original vision, the legislation would have required energy companies to work with landowners on the placement of facilities, use the best practices available to minimize impacts, and to fairly compensate surface owners for use and damage of the property.

The most recent version of the act, though, is none of that, critics – and its former advocates -- claim. House Bill 1185 was introduced in the present legislative session by Sen. Jim Isgar, D-Hesperus. While in its initial form it won wide support by surface-owners’ rights advocates, those same people now argue that it has evolved, through industry intervention, into a form that is not just bad, but actually weakens the rights it originally set out to strengthen.

The San Juan Citizen’s Alliance, which has long been advocating for surface-owner rights in the Four Corners region, released an urgent alert to its members on Wednesday urging people to call state representatives to vote against the bill. The alert argued that “if this bill passes, Colorado will have the worst landowner damages policy in the region.”

This new version of the bill, the group argues, reinforces the industry’s present ability to offer “take it or leave it” agreements, and to drill on property without the landowner’s consent. Other negative consequences of the bill the group cites include not applying surface-owner protection to existing leases (even though “most all known mineral formations in Colorado are already under lease,” the group claims), it restricts landowners’ rights to recover damages, fails to direct industry to use the best available management practices, and it overturns a Colorado Supreme Court decision requiring drillers to accommodate landowners to the fullest extent possible.

Durango Herald environmental columnist Mark Pearson, also the director of the San Juan Citizen’s Alliance, wrote that “The bill has grown so bad that county governments, led by La Plata County, are calling the bill a threat to local land use that could undermine current rules that protect landowners.”

La Plata County’s commissioners had at first supported Isgar’s bill. On Monday, though, the commissioners delivered a letter to Sen. Isgar that complained that the present form of the HB 1185 was “a serious step backward” and “undermines local government authority in a wholly unacceptable way,” reports the Durango Herald.

Gwen Lachelt, director of the Oil & Gas Accountability Project, argued this week in an editorial in the Durango Herald that even though Sen. Isgar introduced the bill, he now needs to lead the way in assuring it doesn’t become a bad law. “Sen. Isgar will need to demonstrate his leadership on behalf of his constituents and kill this industry-hijacked bill,” she wrote.

HB 1185 passed out of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, and quickly passed the House, 60 – 3. It was headed to the Senate floor today (Friday), but Isgar kept the bill from action saying he wanted to research the complaints about the bill.

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