Our weekly wrap on the top 5 energy stories for the week of June 24th

La Plata County Commissioners sent a letter to Colorado BLM Director Helen Hankins, urging that her office engage in better land use planning, before offering leases to oil and gas companies. They did so out of concern for the damage irresponsible oil and gas leasing could do to landowners, water resources, and Mesa Verde National Park. Drilling could exacerbate air pollution at Mesa Verde. This would harm tourism opportunities, and threats to water supplies could negatively affect landowners in the western part of the county.

A Denver Post review of Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission data found that the Centennial State has been hit with 179 spills so far this year. And, despite what Gov. Hickenlooper likes to claim, a quarter of these spills have led to groundwater contamination. The State of Colorado is charged with holding oil and gas companies responsible for these spills and should levy appropriate fines. So it’s puzzling why Governor Hickenlooper recently gutted legislation that would have set mandatory minimum penalties and increased fines for the companies responsible for the spills.

The previous Congress was the first since the 1960s to protect no additional acres of public land. In an effort to not duplicate that distinction, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) introduced legislation that designates three quarters of a million acres of backcountry land as wilderness in areas such as Browns Canyon, Dolores River Canyon, and the Flat Tops addition.

Park Rangers for Our Lands founder and former National Park Ranger Ellis Richard penned a guest blog for Huffington Post Green to talk about the briefing he delivered alongside NPCA’s Dr. James Nation, last week. A standing-room-only crowd listened and asked questions to learn about the threat that encroaching drilling and fracking operations pose to national parks, from a man who spent nearly 30 years protecting them.

Forbes took a look at the forces driving oil and gas drilling in America, and sure enough they’re economic in nature, not regulatory. As oil and gas executives and their allies in Congress continue to try and push more government handouts to billion-dollar companies, too much production could put oil right where natural gas is – in the red.

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Our weekly wrap on the top 5 energy stories for the week of June 17th

Here are the top five energy stories the Checks and Balances Project was tracking for the week of June 17th. Stories included a new campaign to put conservation on equal ground with oil and gas drilling; our blog on the oil and gas industry’s new PR campaign; an effort by sportsmen to protect backcountry lands in Colorado’s White River region; a briefing on the Hill about fracking and threats to our national parks; and a breaking report showing how states are losing hundreds of millions of dollars due to bargain-basement royalty rates for oil and gas drilling on taxpayer-owned public lands.

The Center for American Progress (CAP) released new polling data by Hart Research which found that “[a]bout two in three (65%) voters say that permanently protecting and conserving public lands for future generations is very important to them personally”, while only 30 percent of Westerners state that oil and gas drilling is an important priority on public lands. The poll represents the stark contrast between efforts in Congress to open more lands for drilling and the wishes of Westerners who want these areas protected. In conjunction with the poll release, CAP was joined by The Wilderness Society and others to launch the “Equal Ground” campaign which seeks to put conservation on a level playing field with oil and gas drilling on our public lands.

In the face of growing public opposition to the oil and gas fracking operations in the West, industry lobby groups launched a new effort to spin the public relations mess they’ve created for themselves. But, true to form, they’re still relying on the same rhetoric and false claims.

Several major sportsmen groups, including Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership joined together to run ads in Colorado newspapers calling for the protection of sportsmen opportunities and wildlife habitat by balancing energy development and protection of Colorado’s backcountry in the White River region. The ads ran in the Denver Post, Rio Blanco Herald Times, Craig Daily Press, Steamboat Springs Pilot & Today, Glenwood Springs Post Independent, Boulder Daily Camera, Loveland Reporter Herald, Longmont Times Call, and Canon City Daily Record.

A joint briefing by the National Parks Conservation Association and Park Rangers for our Lands alerted Congressional staff to the threats faced by national parks and monuments from irresponsible drilling. These parks and monuments are key parts of the Western economy. The presenters urged the federal government to adopt smart land use planning tools to avoid damaging these important economic and cultural resources.

Oil and gas companies continue to rip-off taxpayers by developing resources on taxpayer-owned public lands under incredibly low royalty rates. According to a new report by the Center for Western Priorities, the federal government has set a royalty rate of just 12.5 percent while conservative states such as North Dakota and Texas have set 16.67-18.75 percent and 25 percent respectively. This indirect subsidy costs the federal government and Western states hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

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