June 09, 2009 12:20 AM UTC

McInnis Defends Ritter's Oil and Gas Rules

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• by: Colorado Pols

Not a misprint, as the Grand Junction Sentinel reports:

Mineral owners Saturday assailed a Democratic lawmaker over the state’s new oil and gas rules, while Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis said new natural gas discoveries across the country are playing the primary role in Colorado’s drilling slowdown.

“The new regulations basically took away my minerals rights,” Tom Rutledge told state Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison, at a meeting of the National Association of Royalty Owners in Parachute…

“I don’t appreciate the tone of this entire discussion,” Curry said after also hearing criticism from other mineral owners, including one who said “Demoncrats” are responsible for taking people’s property rights.

The new rules were pushed by Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter and approved this year by a Democrat-controlled Legislature.

“This is your fight; this isn’t my fight,” McInnis joked to Curry when she asked the Grand Junction resident whether he wanted to jump into Saturday’s debate over the new rules.

McInnis instead gave a speech focusing on the numerous new natural gas plays in other parts of the country that have left the United States awash in natural gas and helped lower prices and reduce local drilling.

McInnis is a former western Colorado congressman who recently filed paperwork to run for governor in 2010. In an interview after his speech, he said the state’s new rules aren’t the central cause of Colorado’s drilling slowdown, although they may be a contributing factor.

He said it’s too early to judge the new rules, and the state has a right to be demanding in its regulation of energy companies. [Pols emphasis]

There couldn’t be a clearer distinction between Scott McInnis’ hearteningly reasonable defense of the state’s new oil and gas production rules–in a venue where he could have just as easily tossed the crowd anti-Ritter “Demoncrat” red meat–and upcoming primary opponent Josh Penry’s silly, over-the-top caterwauling on behalf of the energy industry against those rules.

Unfortunately for McInnis, honesty doesn’t win Republican primaries–money does. That’s why Penry sees no downside from inventing totally bogus figures about the drilling slump in Colorado, if doing so services the goals of his energy industry benefactors. Unlike McInnis, who for all his flaws still apparently feels the need to keep his statements at least marginally based in reality, Josh Penry knows who’s buttering his proverbial bread.