This summer the American people are feeling the full effect of our nation’s energy crisis.
While governors of both parties in neighboring energy-rich Western states have responded with an open, cooperative approach to finding solutions to our country’s energy needs, Colorado has unfortunately chosen a different path.
Governor Bill Ritter’s campaign platform, the Colorado Promise, was a plan to address many of the same problems facing other Western states, including how to balance the absolute, critical need for homegrown energy against the important goal of conserving the natural gifts we are blessed with in the West.
But while other Western governors have achieved admirable results through respectful (and sometimes difficult) collaboration with the oil and gas industry, Governor Ritter has chosen an adversarial approach that is costing Coloradans dearly.
In fact, over 1 billion dollars of energy investment in Colorado has fled to other markets because of the poorly conceived and punitive regulatory proposal that the Ritter administration has advanced. The Governor’s administration has acknowledged this “capital flight”, but says it’s not due to his regulatory over-reach.
Nearly every energy expert in the state disagrees. This recipe for regulatory disaster did not originate with the body charged with overseeing the industry (the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission or COGCC), but with lawyers and special interests outside state government. Faced with a flawed proposal, the oil and gas industry in Colorado has worked diligently throughout the regulatory process to inject sound science, fact and operational realities into the deliberations on the proposed rules.
As an industry with a big stake in Colorado, we want to ensure that our operations reflect the values of all Coloradans – respect for the environment in which we live and operate and respect for wildlife and its habitat.
This hostile attitude toward Colorado’s energy industry was clearly demonstrated with the recent sale of production leases on the Roan Plateau. Again, the Ritter Administration chose to favor anti-energy special interests over ordinary Coloradans.
Before Governor Ritter took office, seven years of collaboration with the BLM, the state and other stakeholders went into the development of a management plan that would govern energy production on the Roan. But a newly elected Bill Ritter, needing to reward anti-energy special interests, began advocating for an extremist position that totally undermined this carefully crafted management plan.
Now, with again more uncertainty caused by the Governor’s actions, the revenues from the Roan leases have fallen tens of millions of dollars short of what was expected.
Instead of taking responsibility for his anti-energy development policies, Governor Ritter is blaming the Bush Administration for the shortfall. Governor Ritter wants to have it both ways. A leader knows that’s not possible.
Either the Governor should tell Coloradans that his anti-energy policies will continue costing us dearly in lost revenues, jobs and energy security, or he should reverse course, follow the lead of his fellow Western governors, and begin a collaborative, cooperative relationship with one of Colorado’s (and America’s) most vital industries. We stand ready to work with him should he choose the latter.
Meg Collins is President of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association.
