Colorado voters likely won’t be able to weigh in on the future of oil and gas development this November, but that doesn’t mean the issues themselves are dead. Environmentalists and industry are preparing for the fight to continue on the ground.
The fight for signatures is over, but if oil and gas measures make the ballot this November, the spending frenzy is just beginning. These graphics break down the flows of money on both sides of the oil and gas issues.
There are plenty of similarities in the ongoing fracking debate in Texas and Colorado, but the parallels end when it comes to how oil companies and politicians are dealing with the public’s questions. While concerned residents and anti-fracking groups fight to regulate or ban fracking, oil companies in each state have responded in their own way, as Zain Shauk and Bradley Olson reported for Bloomberg Business Week:
In Texas, drillers are doing their noisy in-your-face fracking as usual. Meanwhile, on a small farm about an hour from the Colorado Rocky Mountains, the oil industry is giving fracking a makeover, cutting back on rumbling trucks and tamping down on pollution. Of course, the fracking battle is not limited to these two states. Various cities and counties across the country have passed 430 measures to ban or restrict the practice, according to Food and Water Watch.
Longmont city council members voted unanimously Tuesday night to appeal to a higher court a District Judge ruling that threw out the community’s ban on fracking.
This week, the Governor of Colorado announced he would convene a special task force to work on resolving conflicts between residents and the state’s oil and gas industry. It’s made the political establishment here breathe a huge sigh of relief.
The Colorado Governor’s office has announced a last-minute compromise to prevent a costly election battle this fall over oil and gas drilling in the state. Gov. John Hickenlooper hopes a new task force is a better solution to the fracking wars than competing ballot measures in November.