Ritter: Your goose is cooked!
More bad news for Governor Bill Ritter and democrats in the state legislature. Under their leadership, Colorado is losing its competitive edge according to a report from the Metro Denver Economic Corporation.
Yet one company is looking to expand in Colorado. You might think that our Governor would welcome this development. You would be wrong. In fact, just the opposite is true for Colorado’s $23 billion oil and gas industry.
Anadarko, one of the world’s largest oil and gas producers, is prepared to invest $100 million in the Wattenburg Field. What’s the hold up? According to an article in the Denver Post, it’s the permitting process and the length of time it takes to get a permit approval, which has nearly doubled under Governor Ritter’s administration.
Since his election in 2006, Colorado’s oil and gas industry has been in Ritter’s line of site. Burdensome regualtions already have resulted in layoffs around the state. Senator Greg Brophy said his hometown of Wray, Colorado, an agricultural town on the Eastern Plains, has lost some 250 good-paying, oil and gas jobs.
This is not the time to be making it more difficult for companies to do business in Colorado. Capital investment, like oil and gas, is fluid. It will leave. Perhaps it’s time to remind everyone, including Governor Ritter, of the KFKA Players and their performance of Andrew Ripemoff’s “When your goose is cooked.”
November 18th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Sorry, Amy, you’re alone in some oilfield on this one. Most Coloradoans I talk to absolutely don’t want further contamination of air and groundwater nor despoiling of our hunting grounds by yet more drilling. In my view as a hunter, I’ve seen too much of it already. This state has been notoriously lax in its standards for extraction, and I welcome better scrutiny and maybe someday, even, better enforcement of existing laws.
I find it especially odd since you live in Weld County, where gas well emissions are considered the biggest problem with air quality (even compared to your wonderful (ahem) other aromas).
As a fellow Republican I can understand that you want to to go after the Democrat Ritter in any way you can. But we’ll part ways when it comes to advocating more drilling and mining in this state.