Changing The Rules
Strange Bedfellows in O&G Fight
By Richard Martin, 3-07-08
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The “simmering battle” between Colorado state regulators and the oil and gas industry took a couple of strange turns this week as the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission got closer to publishing new draft rules for energy production Colorado – which industry officials have criticized in advance for giving too much authority to the Division of Wildlife.
“Tempers flared and text messages flew Wednesday as lawmakers tried to figure out if the state oil and gas commission was about to get the authority to override landowners’ wishes,” The Rocky Mountain News reports.
“There’s an enormous amount of speculation about what these regulations may or may not say,” Harris Sherman, director of the state Department of Natural Resources, told legislators in a testy statehouse briefing.
The industry got an unusual ally when Niger Innis, of the New York-based Congress on Racial Equality, visited Colorado to support lawmakers trying to water down any new regulations. A leader in the struggle against Jim Crow laws in the South in the 1950s and ‘60s, CORE has taken a turn to conservative causes and “has received steady funding from ExxonMobil,” The Durango Herald reports.
Republican state lawmakers are pressing the Dept. of Natural Resources and the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to guarantee the new rules for energy development will not drive the industry out of Colorado. “Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, said he has heard from energy companies on the Eastern Plains that uncertainty about forthcoming rules for issuing drilling permits has pushed them to shift their business to Kansas and Nebraska, which have less onerous permitting rules,” reports The Grand Junction Sentinel.
In other energy news:
-- As the price of oil hits record levels and governments (at least at the state level) get serious about curbing global climate change, “solar thermal plants are being viewed as a renewable power source with huge potential,” The New York Times reports. Two prototype solar thermal plants have opened recently in the Southwestern desert, and another 10 are in “advanced planning.”
-- Oil sands have been billed as a super-abundant, if difficult to recover, source of future petroleum. Developing them, however, is going to be a long slog. An environmental agency in Canada will “take a second look at the greenhouse gas implications of oil sands project in Alberta proposed by Imperial Oil,” The New York Times reports. The Kearl project, in Alberta, would transform 120 square miles of northern forest into a barren oilfield.
-- For years the press has talked about “record oil prices” when, in fact, when adjusted for inflation, fuel prices have remained below the levels of the 1970s. That is no longer the case. “The price of crude oil set another inflation-adjusted record, hitting $103.95 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange before dropping back to $102.45 at the close of regular trading,” reports The Washington Post. Most analysts expect the rise to continue at least to $105 – a level that seemed “ unimaginably high just six months ago.”
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