What's weird about Colorado is that over 90% of "Environmentalist" drive SUVs and they enjoy life in a state that gets a lot of tax revenues from oil & gas companies.
Drillers head to Wyoming, say Colorado is unfriendly to oil and gas. The Denver Post.
Citing mounting public opposition to oil and gas drilling in the state, a growing number of producers in the Denver-Julesburg Basin are favoring Wyoming, North Dakota and Texas as they look to take advantage of rising oil prices. Or, in the case of HighPoint Resources, a firm that is going all in on the D-J Basin, they are targeting rural areas in Weld County, hoping to avoid the backlash that companies such as Crestone Peak Resources and Extraction Oil & Gas have faced as they seek to drill wells in Boulder and Broomfield counties. “We are contemplating trying to exit the D-J Basin and focusing on the Bakken (in North Dakota),” Brad Holly, the president and CEO of the Denver-based producer, said this week at DUG Rockies, a regional oil and gas conference presented by Hart Energy. Holly, who used to head the operations of Anadarko Petroleum, the largest operator in the state, cited Colorado’s regulatory environment as the reason for Whiting putting a “For Sale” sign on its Redtail holdings in Weld County. His comments came the day after a Colorado District Court judge dismissed a case by Thornton to put in local rules stricter than what the state has in place, including 750-foot buffer between wells and buildings.
Environmentalists Sue Over Western Colorado Oil-Gas Drilling. AP.
Environmental groups have asked a federal judge to block oil and gas drilling at 53 sites on public land in western Colorado, saying the U.S. Department of Interior didn’t fully analyze the risks to people and the climate. The lawsuit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Denver. It challenges decisions by the Interior Department in 2016 and 2017 to sell drilling rights on a total of about 70 square miles. The sites are about 30 miles east of Grand Junction. The Interior Department declined to comment.