June 17, 2012 01:58 PM UTC

Oil and Gas Industry Lobbyists Have Been Busy

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• by: Konola

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Yesterday’s topic was a bill introduced by Representative Scott Tipton that would make Drill, Baby, Drill the law of the land in lands managed by the forest service and BLM. It made energy production the only use to be considered when approving drilling requests, leaving out hunters, fishermen, cattlemen, and all recreational users.

What wasn’t mentioned yesterday was the fact that a recent survey of businesses said that the reason they did business in Colorado was closely tied to their access to public lands. According to the survey:

“Moreover, 50% agree (4 in 10 strongly agree) that Colorado’s national parks, forests, monuments and wildlife habitats aren’t just essential parts of the state’s outdoor culture and quality of life, but also reasons to run a business there.”

The survey goes on to ask small businesses if they support Obama’s plan for all of the above energy development.

“Nearly three quarters, or 72%, support the Obama Administration’s proposal for an ‘all-of-the-above’ energy policy that promotes development of various energy sources including solar, wind, biofuels, natural gas, oil and coal. If this strategy took an extra step to protect public lands, 55% would be more likely to support it. That’s more than twice as many (26%) who would be less likely.”

So we have a business climate where the real job creators (small businesses) want there to be public lands that include national parks, forests, monuments and wildlife habitats, but we have an industry that wants to destroy any protections that exist. And we have representatives from Colorado who have been bought and paid for by industry.

It appears as though industry wrote a wish list of legislation, put the list into a hat and Colorado’s representatives each drew out one wish to fulfill. Our representatives are good little soldiers in the war against public lands.

The first wish was discussed in yesterday’s blog. The rest of the wish list legislation is as follows:

Representative Doug Lamborn, of recent birther fame, introduced H.R. 4383, which makes it impossible for most citizens to object to any leasing or drilling decision by assessing a $5,000 documentation fee on anyone objecting to drilling in their front yard. The bill goes on to instruct judges to assume that all initial decisions are correct and limits most delays of drilling decisions to sixty days.

Representative Mike Coffman moves the decision about how much public land is available for drilling from the BLM into the hands of the oil and gas industry in H.B. 4382. The bill requires the BLM to offer for leasing at least 25% of the land nominated by industry. If industry wants more land available than the 20 million acres in leases they are already sitting on, they simply have to nominate more land. The bill then eliminates all of the leasing reforms instituted by Secretary Salazar, preventing local governments from having any say in the leasing process, even when it involves protecting air and water quality or wildlife habitat. The bill eliminates scientific reviews prior to drilling.

The final bill in the evil four was introduced by Representative Cory Gardner. H.R. 4480 mandates that anytime President Obama draws oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and equal percentage of public land must be leased to oil and gas companies. Effectively this approach thumbs its nose at any market based approach to supply and demand. It gives oil and gas companies more leases to sit on without developing without demanding that any of the existing leases be developed.

If these four evil bills are passed, we won’t recognize the Colorado that we love.  

Links to all four bills have been posted at www.konola4colorado.com