Governor takes heat for stand on drilling

When Gov. Bill Ritter asked the helicopter pilot to make an impromptu landing on a mountain in northwest Colorado, little did he know he would anger Moffat County commissioners and stir up his choppy relationship with the oil and gas industry.

Last week, the county’s three commissioners, all Republicans, fired off a scathing letter to the Democratic governor, criticizing his unannounced July 3 visit during a tour of oil and gas drilling sites in the region. He subsequently requested that the federal government exempt the scenic 77,000-acre Vermillion Basin from natural gas drilling.

Ritter’s request, the commissioners say, ignores years of hard work by local, federal and state agencies and activist groups to cobble together a drilling plan for the environmentally sensitive basin, which contains billions of dollars of natural gas reserves.

“Our community spent the last 12 years conducting the most in-depth planning process in Colorado,” states the letter, dated July 17. “We are perplexed by your agency’s leaning to the views of a small minority, yet ignoring the collaborations of the local governments, various users groups, and citizens affected by the future management of Vermillion Basin.”

The plan allows drilling on 1 percent of the land, or 770 acres, at a time. Companies have to clean up and re-vegetate before they can drill further.

Rocky Mountain News