05 Mar ICYMI – News Clips from the Past Few Weeks

March 5, 2015 –

GJ Daily Sentinel – Battleground shift heads up valley, exposes agricultural rift
CHC member Oogie McGuire sums up the community’s concerns about the proposed 146-well Bull Mountain drilling plan in the upper North Fork Valley:  “We’ve seen what happened over on the other side of the Grand Mesa (in heavily drilled Garfield County). We can’t afford that here. That will destroy us here.”  READ MORE

GJ Daily Sentinel – Roadless dispute clouds drilling proposal
“Questions over the applicability of roadless-area protections in national forests continue to hang over a drilling proposal in the upper North Fork Valley.”  READ MORE

GJ Daily Sentinel Op-Ed – Mike Drake: Large-scale industrial activity a tough fit for Colorado’s farm-to-table capital
“We all want the North Fork to thrive. To many of our existing businesses, farms and ranches, and residents, a huge spike in drilling in our small valley is not a good fit, to say it mildly. We hope that like other places that started in conflict, such as Roan Plateau, we can reach a solution in the North Fork.  We do not want to be subject to the whims of global markets and energy companies. Many here are intent instead on a different path forward, and believe it is incumbent on the BLM, the state and counties, and the energy companies to respectfully consider these concerns.”  READ MORE

CHC’s Board Chair John VanDenBerg speaks to the Governor’s Oil & Gas Task Force in Rifle. Click the image above to read an article about the meeting from the Glenwood Post Independent.

Fox 31 Denver – Oil and gas task force offers few solutions to local control issue

High Country News – Oil pipelines are going to keep breaking in rivers
“On the second day of July in 2011, I walked down to my hay fields to see if the Yellowstone River had flooded its banks. It had — but so had crude oil leaking from Exxon’s Silvertip Pipeline, which runs underneath the river upstream from my farm south of Billings, Montana.  That was the beginning of months of dealing with cleanup workers, water and soil testing, while my family suffered from chronic coughs and a lot of stress. In the end, it was determined that 1,500 barrels of oil had spilled into the river.”  READ MORE

Denver Post – Colorado land impact of oil and gas boom: scars spread and stay
“Oil and gas companies have yet to fully restore land around half of the 47,505 inactive wells in Colorado, and 72 percent of those un-restored sites have been in the process for more than five years, The Denver Post has found.  The state requires oil and gas companies to restore all sites completely — to reduce erosion, loosen compacted soil, prevent dust storms and control invasions of noxious weeds.  But Colorado does not set a timetable for getting the job done. Nor do state regulators track how long companies take to complete required work.  And unlike other states, Colorado does not require companies to submit reclamation plans before drilling.”   READ MORE

GJ Daily Sentinel – Gas-drilling foes turn out in force, against tall odds
“Some 200 people turned out at a Bureau of Land Management meeting at Paonia High School regarding SG Interests’ plan to drill up to 146 natural gas wells in the upper North Fork Valley, with many in attendance indicating their concern about the project.  Some 30 people addressed the BLM and crowd, and none voiced support for the plan. Many in the crowd raised their hands when one speaker asked them if they worried that the project could hurt their property values.”  READ MORE

High Country News – Statistical realism: David Hughes crunches unpopular numbers for the shale oil boom
“Hughes is not an anti-fossil fuels activist; rather, he is, he says, a ‘statistical realist.’ … Oil companies, he says, will not be deterred from expensive-to-extract fossil fuel sources such as shale oil and tar sands as long as the per barrel price is high enough. But every year that unconventional energy sources remain at the center of our energy portfolio, he says, is a year lost from the inevitable transition that must be made away from them. ‘My view is that the U.S. should take the shale revolution as a blessing in disguise,’ he says, ‘and begin thinking longer-term about a strategy to manage what will inevitably be scarcity.'”  READ MORE