June 17, 2010 07:40 PM UTC

Welcome Back to La Plata County, BP!

• 1 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

From the Colorado Independent:

BP in the coming months may have to look to its lucrative natural gas fields in southwestern Colorado to recoup the massive financial hit it’s taking in the wake of the worst oil spill in American history.

A BP America spokeswoman this week told the Colorado Independent the company is eyeing a resumption of coal-bed methane drilling in La Plata County this fall, although the decision has more to do with a hoped-for rebound in natural gas prices and some resolution with regard to local drilling regulations…

“It was more the economics of it actually,” BP America senior director of government and public affairs Lisa Hough said of the hiatus for the company’s $2.4 billion drilling program in the area. “We had a lot with rules and regulations coming on and the drop in the natural gas price and we actually had a real backlog of wells that were drilled but not completed.”

…But conservationists and longtime observers of southwestern Colorado’s energy sector aren’t buying the regulatory argument for the drilling slowdown.

“That’s a crock, because since 1992 – 18 years – they’ve been drilling with essentially the same regulations that are currently in place,” said Josh Joswick, a former three-term La Plata county commissioner and currently the oil and gas issues organizer for the nonprofit San Juan Citizens Alliance. “This latest round of revisions was minor in terms of further regulations put on them.”

Joswick is a three-term Democratic commissioner who first took office shortly after the state supreme court decision backing limited county land-use regulation of oil and gas drilling (previously only regulated by the state). He said the county has the third lowest mill levy (property tax) in the state, which makes it an ideal place for BP or any operator to drill…

Even better, they’ll find gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes ready to beg them for “forgiveness,” an experience they may be strangely used to after Rep. Joe Barton of Texas groveled before BP’s public enemy #1 Tony Hayward today–reportedly, it was in the Republican Study Committee memo that groveling to this man most Americans want to see frog-marched is the thing to do!

A few sycophants notwithstanding, we would advise BP to be extra-super careful while ‘completing’ those La Plata County gas wells–nasty connotations that may have lacked previously.