Colorado initiatives would foreclose oil and gas development

Aug. 1, 2016
Initiatives in constitutionally pliant Colorado need attention from oil and gas professionals everywhere.

Initiatives in constitutionally pliant Colorado need attention from oil and gas professionals everywhere.

In an effort to get two measures on a fall state ballot, activists have until Aug. 8 to collect 98,492 signatures of Colorado voters.

Both initiatives can seem benign. But they'd foreclose oil and gas development.

That, of course, is what activists want. If they succeed in Colorado, accommodating as it is to citizen initiatives, they'll expand the campaign.

Initiative 75 would transfer from the state to local governments authority over oil and gas development when the outcome would be toughened regulation.

In a letter to members, Colorado Oil & Gas Association Pres. and Chief Executive Officer Dan Haley warns of "a patchwork of regulations across the state, making development difficult."

Initiative 78 would require a 2,500-ft setback between oil and gas facilities and occupied structures or areas of "special concern." Those areas include drinking-water sources, lakes, rivers, perennial or intermittent streams, creeks, irrigation canals, riparian areas, playgrounds, permanent sports fields, amphitheaters, public parks, and public open space.

"It is essentially a ban on new oil and gas development, cutting off 90% of the state from new development," Haley says.

That estimates comes from data collected by the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission.

The setback requirement, Haley adds, "shreds the private property rights of 600,000 mineral owners," who probably would sue the state if it passed.

In a study published last month for three business groups, the Business Research Division at the University of Colorado Leeds School of Business estimates business consequences of the setback requirement, based on the conservation commission's estimate of affected acreage: state gross domestic product, down by an average $7.1 billion in the first 5 years and $14.5 billion between 2017 and 2031; jobs, down 54,000 in the first 5 years and up to 104,000 over 15 years; and personal income, down $10.9 billion over 15 years.

For activists phobic about oil and gas, of course, no cost is too high.