EDITORIAL: No special session on fracking unless oil and gas industry signals place to start lawmaking

Oil and gas kingpins and all of those who support them had their chance to ensure the state implemented fair and reliable rules for extracting petroleum products in Colorado, but they blew it.

For the past few years, oil and gas companies, backed by Gov. John Hickenlooper and others, have pressed for what are essentially carte blanche regulations for how to protect the environment and property rights of others as it goes about its business of making good on the current Colorado gas and oil boom.

New drilling technology and a refined fracking process have made it easier and cheaper than ever to coax natural gas and oil from places in the state where it wasn’t previously practical.

In an effort to provide for growth and exploration, the state essentially rolled over local counties and municipalities with a blanket, one-size-fits-all cadre of rules, regulations and setbacks that could never have really worked or be trusted. 

That was the first time they blew it.

This year, the disdain for statewide fracking regulations became apparent after handful of Colorado cities took matters into their own hands at the ballot box. Several cities have either banned fracking or added additional restrictions over those imposed by the state. Some of these elections are awaiting judgments from the courts as to whether the state or municipality will prevail. That’s when oil and gas officials had an opportunity to go back to Colorado residents to allow local towns to make their own limits on extraction, and to grant their own variances. The legislation would have been tricky, ensuring stability to the oil and gas industry, but also ensuring that local governments could implement common sense where it was needed.

The mission was too daunting and it never happened.

Now, even more towns and cities across the state will ask voters to ban or limit gas and oil drilling, creating the nightmare for the state’s oil and gas industry it had hoped to avoid.

There could never be one set of state regulations that could govern a process as varied and complex as drilling and fracking in a state with so many extremely different environments and developments. Aurora is nothing — absolutely nothing — like Rifle. Only Aurora can determine when a process as industrial as oil and gas extraction should be permitted on a particular site in Aurora. The same with Rifle. 

Now Hickenlopper is considering a special session of the General Assembly to address the issue one more time. It would be a waste of time and money unless the oil and gas lobby signaled in advance they would back a statewide referendum or law granting local governments the ability to impose limits and variances on state regulations.

Gas and oil officials would be wise to do so. Otherwise, a push from the ground up from voters and local governments will either win this argument in the courts and at the ballot boxes, or state lawmakers next year will yield to public sentiment adamant that local government have oversight of such an industrial and controversial business. The risk to Colorado’s gas and oil boom is real, and at this point, only the oil and gas industry has the power to change the inevitable outcome. The time to act is now.