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August 13, 2010 07:39 PM UTC

Dan Maes--Wrong for Colorado

  • 37 Comments
  • by: ClubTwitty

As oil and gas activity in Colorado climbs out of the trough of its latest bust, on track to see the second highest number of drilling permits issued since the boom crested in 2008, the popular GOP myth that industry has ‘fled the state’ is shown to be exactly the silliness so many claimed it was.  

Although clearly on the rebound as natural gas prices slowly rise, Dan Maes’ second priority–after he destroys thousands of non-specified jobs–is to ‘beg forgiveness’ from the drillers who, over the last couple of years (during the worse economic downturn of our time) laid down rigs and laid off workers (as any industry does when prices for their commodity crash by 60%).

Resource economies are notoriously volatile as prices fluctuate dramatically, a lesson that has been learned repeatedly throughout the West. Good economic policy would work to diversify–not homogenize–the economy, and to build infrastructure toward the future.  

On his website, Maes explains his understanding of the issue:

…[A]n industry expert in the oil and gas industry clearly has laid out to me that our current governor has made oil and gas exploration and mining more costly and difficult as a result of more bureaucratic regulations all in the name of the politically correct new energy economy.

Dan Maes is a funny guy–how exactly he got to his current perch and his qualifications for sitting there are open to speculation. But policy matters, and Coloradans deserve to know what Dan would really do with the keys to the Governor’s office.  

 

One thing Maes claims he would do is repeal the state’s oil and gas regulations:

Maes, an Evergreen businessman, has already made up his mind on the regs, telling the Sentinel he would work to repeal them right away, but he did at least promise to personally fly to the site of any oil and gas rig alleged to be causing environmental problems…

Dan Maes’ ‘Three Point Plan’

The Durango Herald ran this article July 13, 2010:

He’s pitching a three-point plan. First, he would downsize state government, although he has not pinpointed where to cut employees.

Second, he would “beg forgiveness” from the natural-gas industry for the environmental rules initiated by Gov. Bill Ritter, in the hopes that energy jobs will return to Colorado.

Finally, he would cut taxes, especially for businesses.

So far Maes has gotten far on very little–policy wise.  He wants to shrink (non-specific) government, gut regulations, and cut taxes.  

Without any details the first and third points are just political blather. His pander to the industry boys however is a little creepy.  A strange sense of the public interest.

Meanwhile many of the drillers are doing just fine under the new regulations–even reaching agreement with the Division of Wildlife to extend Colorado’s rule to better protect our shared wildlife resources. As the Colorado Independent reports:

Ritter announced a groundbreaking deal with nine of the state’s largest oil and gas producers to protect key wildlife habitat on more than 355,000 acres of the state’s Western Slope under provisions of last year’s amended and oft-criticized oil and gas drilling regulations.

Today the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel editorialized:

Some critics of the new rules have argued that the wildlife requirements in this part of the state were so onerous and costly that they would drive gas companies out of the region.

But supporters of the new rules – and The Daily Sentinel has long been among that group – have maintained that the rules simply provide new means of protecting the environment, not measures aimed at driving the gas industry from Colorado.

The state and the 10 companies involved in these agreements have demonstrated that industry can continue to work and protect Colorado’s invaluable wildlife resources. We congratulate all of the companies and state authorities involved.

Maes is no longer just talking to the Tea Partiers, now he is talking to the state. The man wants to be Governor and it’s time he provide some details to his tossed off remarks in his red meat stump speeches. Which jobs would he cut ‘on day one?’  Besides groveling, what changes would he make for the oil and gas industry?

Williams Pays Record Fine for Spring Contamination

“WATER! It is an absolute human and economic necessity. WATER! You and I cannot live without it.”   Scott McInnis (?)

Wiser words were never lifted written. Water is indeed a necessity, amplified in the arid West. One of the most obvious and troubling impacts of drilling and production are the impacts to our water sources and resource.

According to an article by Dennis Webb of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel:

State regulators Thursday unanimously signed off on a record $423,300 fine against Williams for benzene contamination of a spring that led to a man becoming ill in 2008.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission acted in a case that came to light when Ned Prather drank the spring water at his cabin northwest of Parachute in May 2008 and had to go to the hospital.

…”It seems very generous” to Williams, commissioner Michael Dowling said of the negotiated amount.

…Williams continues to disagree with the state’s determination that the contamination came from a nearby Williams production pit that had a leaking liner.

Such ‘incidents,’ which are invariably tied up in investigations and hearings for years, are not exactly uncommon the Daily Sentinel article notes:

The previous record fine by the commission was $390,000, imposed in April against Oxy USA for another case of spring contamination, also northwest of Parachute.

The same day, the commission levied another fine of $257,400 against Oxy for yet another case of spring contamination in the same area.

The state is investigating Oxy as the possible source of contamination of a second spring on the Prather property…

Three of the four highest fines ever levied by the commission involve Garfield County violations. In 2004, EnCana Oil & Gas (USA) was fined what was then a record $371,200 for a gas seep into West Divide Creek south of Silt.

Colorado includes many natural resources–and copious mineral ones too. We cannot let the long-term health of our water, wildlife and lands suffer for the short-term wealth brought by this highly industrialized, and always impactful, activity.

Contrary to industry spin there are a growing number of contamination incidents.  It’s not just a theoretical fear. These cases point to the need for stronger (state and federal) regulation. Maes’ misguided willingness to hand over the state’s authority is wrong for Colorado.  

Maes should specify what exactly Coloradans should apologize for as activity rebounds and mishaps mount.  Clearly the oil and gas commission is already overworked and understaffed. Which of these positions will go in the Maes Employee Massacre?  

Any governor begging forgiveness is unseemly but for Maes it is a regular feature of his stump speeches. Now that Dan Maes is the Republican candidate to lead our state, media and citizens cannot let him get away with off-handed remarks. Now is the time to demand the details.

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37 thoughts on “Dan Maes–Wrong for Colorado”

  1. that Maes doesn’t have a clue how to implement all of his talk.

    The real questions are: How exactly will the Colorado GOP force him from the race in order to name a sane replacement, and failing that, how many Republicans will cross over and vote for Hickenlooper?

        1. I’ve already talked to several R’s in the business arena who are leaning Hickenlooper. The crazy t-baggers will go to Maes and the racists will go to Tanc.  

      2. but he is a pretty good imitation of a Rockefeller Republican so a lot of corporate Republicans will give him a long look.

        I was on the Hickenlooper conference call last Wednesday and Hickenlooper really didn’t have any grand ideas about job growth other than cut red tape (regulations) and encourage county level development plans.  I thought it was a pretty flat performance.

        1. Besides attracting innovative businesses to the state such as bio-tech, aerospace and clean tech through incentives and a strong higher education structure there’s not much a Governor can to drive jobs to the state. Especially since the next Gov will have his hands tied when it comes to adding government jobs.

          Same is true for the President. There’s only so much they can do and anyone who tells you otherwise is talking out of their azz.  

          1. I generally like the county level development idea but there are things that span counties that need attention.

            One thing I would like to see would be more attention on reviving our timber industries by utilization of our aging forests for conversion to renewable fuels.  The beetles are eating across county boundaries and there is now a lot of dead wood standing that could be used for pellets.  There are efforts at CSU to used woody pulp as an alternative to corn based ethanol.  How about promoting Colorado as the Saudi Arabia of pellets and embark on cooperative ventures to clean up our forests and move towards sustainable heating.

            The alternative is to do nothing and watch everything go up in smoke.  A governor can use the bully pulpit to move people in a direction even if he doesn’t have the funds to execute a specific plan.

            1. I know a couple of businesses that looked into the pellet concept and they’ve come to the conclusion that it takes much more energy to drag the trees out of the forest and process them then the total about of energy you get out of the deal. It’s not efficient enough to be leveraged on a large scale. That being said, I like the direction you’re heading in…

              1. But you have to factor in the immense costs and damages if we just leave a bunch of dead trees all over the place and end up with the firestorm of the millenium.

                Production of pellets should be subsidized so that we can clear out a lot of this dangerous deadwood.

                1. Control burns.

                  You’ll have to have mechanized vehicles driving all throughout our forests to get to these trees, not to mention the rough terrain they’d be working in. Not an easy task no matter how you go about it.  

                  1. There are a lot of old mining and logging roads already in place that can be utilized.  I certainly don’t advocate trashing our forests but wood utilization can complement forest management practices.  Our forests are one of our most important resources here in Colorado and we need to see them as an economic opportunity as well as an urgent priority to protect them for their watershed importance.  The water is as important as the wood.

                2. the idea that beetle killed forests are more susceptible to massive fire.  Meanwhile, the spread of roads is linked with higher incidences of fire starts.

                  Turning backcountry forests into to managed estates isn’t the way to go.  Management should be focused near communities, creating defensible space and protecting infrastructure.  Creating an industry will create a need for more and more ‘treatments’ further and further into the backcountry.

                  1. and I agree with fire management around Wildland Urban Interface areas.  I’ve lived in a WUI for a long time and am involved with forest professionals in implementing Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP) in our areas.

                    I also support the protection of back country forests for their watershed value.

                    The diary topic was suitability for governing the state and the side topic was about envisioning Colorado as more than a place for mom and pop start ups to do business out of their garage and go for a bike ride after work.

                    My position is that the future will see major changes away from fossil fuel dependency and that will require treating our forests more like a crop to preserve the remaining oil for needed things like plastic and fertilizer.  While the current beetle kill is a 5-20 year phenomenon, if we don’t want our forests to get back to such an unhealthy condition we will need to do thinning on a regular basis and utilization of the removed material will help offset the costs of forest management.  Nobody wants to create Forest Improvement tax districts right now to do regular fire mitigation so you are going to have to find a way to utilize the material to pay for the costs of thinning.  The world is going to change dramatically and we need manage and utilize our forests in new ways to achieve a sustainable future.  Renewable fuels will involve more than wind and solar.

                    Back to the original topic of the vision thing and the apparent cluelessness of all the candidates.

              2. As fossil fuel supplies diminish and costs skyrocket, alternative fuels will become cost competitive.  In the utility industry it is called grid parity where the cost to acquire alternative energy from sources like wind turbines approaches the extraction costs for natural gas.  The key here is to start the process of conversion to a sustainable future before the shocks of steep increases in fossil fuels (2008) lead to economic chaos.

                I’d like to see tax credits for new home construction for the installation of pellet heat as the primary heating source.  It almost goes back the days when you had coal hoppers.  We already have an abundant supply but we need to create demand.  As long as fossil fuels are cheaper you won’t get any movement but the tipping point might be too sudden to wait until market forces react.  It is over the horizon planning that should include private and public sector collaborative efforts.  

                1. I just think there are better ways to go about clean tech/renewable energy solutions. Twitty make a great point about what a pellet industry would do to our forests. The last thing we want to do is turn our forests into “big business” and retrofit our energy systems to a resource that will be gone within 5-10 years

          2. 1. Competent leadership for the Dept of Revenue.

            2. Consider Colorado businesses when looking for vendors.

            3. Give businesses clear specific direction from regulatory agencies. At present businesses have to guess and are then fined if the state disagrees.

            4. Pass a bond to fix our infrastructure. Businesses don’t move to places that are falling apart.

      3. A large number of R’s and R leaning U’s will vote for Hick or be an undervote.  They did the same thing last time with Ritter.  I don’t think Hick is going to be any great improvement over Ritter and you (plural) joined forces with the Denver Postal tabloid and the McInnis haters to get rid of the only one that had more knowledge of state government than the three left standing. That’s the way it is.  

        In the next few days I’ll happily be back in the ranks of the Unaffiliated because frankly the extremists in both parties leave me cold.  

        3. As Devilish notes, Hickenlooper is about as far from that characterization as you can get.

          And while LB and a few others will surely disagree, so is Bennet.

          Do Blue Dogs Salazar and Markey qualify as extremists? Or Ed Perlmutter, who has Aurora’s Republican mayor singing his praises? If the Denver and Boulder congressional reps are all you’ve got, that’s a mighty slim hook to hang that label on.

        4. I know it is a conservative staple to blame others but don’t you think that Scotty maybe had a little something to do with his flame out.  Also state government experience from the 80’s might be overrated.  Ethics standards have been cleaned up a lot since then so Scotty might have had problems conducting business like in the past.

          I’m thinking one of the ways you can use your bitterness to help our little community Ellie is to keep bringing up issues with regards to the different candidates.  You have more of a knack for finding the bad stories about Hickenlooper that other people sweep under the rug so maybe think of it as a duty to expose the ugly truth.  Write some diaries and go after these candidates who are clearly below what we could have had if only the black helicopters hadn’t shown up.

           

          1. of why I’m going U.  I respect most of the D’s I’m close to just as I respect my close Republican friends.  We have intelligent discussions of our differing views routinely.  Unfortunately we aren’t flame throwers and would be totally boring as a group to people like you.

            By the way, I’m not bitter.  Sad that a good man lost but I’ve been around far to long and seen other great men/women lose an election (some of which were Democrats).  

            2. I’d like to second GG’s suggestion. Some of us more partisan types could use a nudge now and then. Why not bring to our attention shortcomings in Dem. (or Lib.) policy statements that we may overlook? A sharp, discerning opposition could be invaluable in the coming months. You’ve obviously got what it takes.

            3. I think you are intellectually dishonest to always blame others.  You never acknowledged that McInnis was responsible in any way for his failures.

              you (plural) joined forces with the Denver Postal tabloid and the McInnis haters to get rid of the only one . . .

              You blame me or people like me for choosing to not be involved in selecting the candidates by becoming unaffiliated.  I can tell you that I’m not going to lose any sleep over you blaming me for re-registering as unaffiliated.

              If you have discussed anything other than the phony victimization of Scott McInnis without ever acknowledging his ethical shortcomings, I didn’t see it.  If you want to talk about the issues that effect all of us then talk about them.  I don’t have a problem with differences in policy positions.  It was the disingenuous victimization of Scott McInnis that made my reach for my asbestos gloves.  My bad but you’re a fraud when it comes to blaming others for McInnis’ failures.

            1. Ellie is a nice addition to the joint. She’s civil and she’s smart.

              Plus, Ralphie speaks highly of her and his opinion counts quite a bit with me.  

    2. the law of supply and demand — with the stroke of a pen! — and then set about turning Colorado’s boom-and-bust situation into something better, simply by declaring it’s done. Maybe there will be more begging, maybe not, those details can be worked out later.

  2. Charles Ashby of the GJ Daily Sentinel reported on Hickenlooper’s last swing through the western slope and caught up with an executive for one of Colorado’s largest natural gas producers and the Piceance Basin’s largest operator.  

    Shockingly enough, it seems as if the new COGCC regulations weren’t the cause of the drilling downturn.  At least according to a guy who would know a whole helluva lot more about it than Dan Maes or any of the other industry shills lurking about in the GOP.

    Al Harrison, vice president of exploration and production for Williams’ Denver region and the Piceance Basin, said his oil and gas company is happy to sit down with anyone to talk about enhancing business, particularly if it also deals with reducing unneeded government regulations.

    But Harrison said he isn’t the typical oil and gas executive operating in the state. Unlike others, he said it would be a bad idea to start all over again rewriting the state’s stricter new drilling regulations.

    Instead, Harrison said he agrees with Hickenlooper that while some may need to be tweaked, the rest aren’t as onerous as some people think or the industry initially feared.

    Harrison, who said his company hasn’t endorsed anyone in the governor’s race, said the new regulations came at a time when the worst recession hit the nation. Plummeting natural gas prices nationwide and a lack of transmission lines to ship Colorado gas to markets elsewhere in the nation had far more to do with a slowdown in drilling than the new rules, he said.

    Those rules were a concern initially because the industry wasn’t sure how they would impact production, and it turned out they didn’t, Harrison said.

    “With the lower commodity prices, we need to keep our business running very efficiently,” he said. “The new rules, we didn’t know how that was going to manifest itself, but we’ve seen some good progress. Now, things are pretty consistent. It was a learning process. It was a combination of a lot of things.”

     

  3. This diary and subsequent thread is what I lurk for: well researched information and opiniated but calm analysis by knowledgeable people. I learn more here than from any other source. (Shows my limitations!)

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