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Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Efforts to severely restrict oil and gas development in Colorado failed to get the required number of valid signatures on petitions, Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams said August 29, which means those measures will not appear on the November ballot.
Two proposed ballot measures, Initiative 75 and Initiative 78, were fielded by groups opposed to drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Each required 98,492 valid signatures to get on the November ballot as an amendment to the state's constitution. Initiative 75 would have given local governments the authority to regulate oil-and-gas development, including banning hydraulic fracturing. Initiative 78 called for a mandatory setback of at least 2,500 feet around oil and gas operations.
Oil and gas companies said the measures would virtually eliminate drilling in Colorado, the nation's sixth-largest producer of oil and gas. A report from Bloomberg News said operators extracted about $10 billion of oil and gas from the Centennial State last year.
The fate of the measures was a widely discussed topic at last week's 28th Annual Rocky Mountain Energy Summit (RMES), organized by the Colorado Oil & Gas Association (COGA) (Denver, Colorado).
Though the measures failed to get 5% of eligible voter signatures, the measures came close: Initiative 75 had about 79,634 valid signatures based on a random sample conducted by the secretary of state. Initiative 78 garnered an estimated 77,109 valid signatures.
It's not clear whether the ballot proponents will go to court to challenge the secretary of state's decision. "We were outspent 35:1 by oil industry opponents and faced an unprecedented effort to keep the measures off the ballot," Laurie Petrie, Food & Water Watch's Rocky Mountain director, said in a statement. "The enthusiasm of this citizen-led effort has not been dampened, and we will continue to fight to protect the health of Coloradans, and the natural beauty of our state, from fracking."
In a research note on Monday, David Tameron, an analyst with Wells Fargo, said an appeal of the secretary of state's ruling "would appear to be futile."
If either initiative was certified for the November ballot, sources at the COGA conference vowed to go to court to keep the initiatives off the ballot. The measures were amendments to the state's constitution.
Although both sides took out paid advertisements to make their point, it appears the respective campaigns waged their battle more on a face-to-face, person-to-person level. CRED, an industry-funded outreach organization, knocked on 1.5 million doors across the state, Karen Crummy, a CRED spokesperson, told Industrial Info.
Two years ago, CRED and the industry battled against similar ballot measures until Governor John Hickenlooper proposed an 11th hour compromise that kept the measures off the ballot at about the time crude oil prices were hovering around $100 per barrel. For more on that, see August 7, 2014, article - Oil & Gas Industry Sees Brisk Business in Colorado after Withdrawal of Voter Initiatives. However, the governor's task force did not produce results that satisfied drilling foes, who vowed to return to the ballot initiative to amend the state's constitution. For more on that, see May 22, 2015, article - Initiatives to Limit Fracking Appear Headed to Colorado's 2016 Ballot. In Colorado, at least, the industry has long struggled with winning the public trust on hydraulic fracturing. For more on that, see August 11, 2015, article - Billions of Dollars at Risk if Oil & Gas Industry Can't Do a Better Job Telling its Story.
At the COGA conference last week, speakers and audience members pondered how best to act when a significant portion of the public appears to oppose hydraulic fracturing and oil and gas development. Gary Sernovitz, a managing director at Line Rock Partners (Westport, Connecticut), a private equity fund specializing in energy, told about 1,000 attendees at the conference only about 25% of Democrats said they supported hydraulic fracturing in a Gallup poll taken in March. That poll showed 55% of Republicans said they supported it, while only 35% of Independents said they did.
"It's pretty surprising how unpopular fracking is," Sernovitz said August 24. In asking a question of Sernovitz, an audience member said, "We've tried to educate the public on the facts, but that didn't seem to work. What should we do?" He recommended trying to engage the public on a more visceral, emotional level.
"Natural gas is decarbonizing the air faster than any regulation could do, and the U.S. reduced its carbon dioxide emissions faster than any other nation on earth due to natural gas," he recommended. "If people care about the environment, they should care that natural gas is helping clean it up."
Another line of engagement: national security. Sernovitz said overseas oil and gas producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia win and U.S. national security loses if fracking's foes win the day.
A third line of emotional engagement: local jobs and the economy. Colorado's Oil & Gas industry employs about 100,000 people, Sernovitz said, and most if not all of them would lose their jobs if initiatives 75 and 78 were adopted by voters. "There would be a multibillion-dollar loss to the state's economy if we lost the opportunity to develop oil and gas in Colorado." He and other speakers pointed out the appliances of modern life, such as cell phones, would not be available at a low cost if oil and gas development were restricted.
Another speaker at the COGA event, Chip Rimer, senior vice president for U.S. onshore at Noble Energy Incorporated (NYSE:NBL) (Houston, Texas), was asked what the industry should do if those initiatives failed to make the ballot in November. "Step on the gas," he advised. "Don't let up. We have momentum. Continue being a safe and responsible operator. Continue to show you are a good steward."
Like all speakers at the COGA event, Rimer spoke before the Colorado Secretary of State rules on the validity of signatures for Initiatives 75 and 78. He told conference attendees that all of the company's Colorado employees have been through "cradle-to-grave training on the oil and gas operations so they could answer any questions or concerns a friend, relative or neighbor might have about hydraulic fracturing."
"Across the state, the industry has 100,000 ambassadors," Rimer told about 1,000 attendees Aug 24. "We need to listen better--listening is critical. And we need to practice message discipline: Our messages should be accurate, factual and consistent. But don't preach, because people don't want to be preached to."
"We want to make a difference one person at a time," the Noble executive continued. "We can't stop education and outreach, even if the ballot measures don't pass. Hydraulic fracturing gives us the energy we need, the economy we want and the environment we deserve." Noble, one of the largest operators in Colorado, provided funding for CRED and had high praise for its door-to-door outreach. Rimer said, "We didn't see much movement (in polls) when we just dropped material off at people's homes. But we saw a pretty substantial change with face-to-face engagement."
The industry has done a "poor job" engaging with stakeholders, Rimer said. "We lost an entire generation when we said, 'Trust us.' Now, our goal is to have people feel, 'I know people at Noble and they're good people,'" he said.
Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, five offices in North America and 10 international offices, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities. Follow IIR on: Facebook - Twitter - LinkedIn. For more information on our coverage, send inquiries to info@industrialinfo.com or visit us online at http://www.industrialinfo.com.
Two proposed ballot measures, Initiative 75 and Initiative 78, were fielded by groups opposed to drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Each required 98,492 valid signatures to get on the November ballot as an amendment to the state's constitution. Initiative 75 would have given local governments the authority to regulate oil-and-gas development, including banning hydraulic fracturing. Initiative 78 called for a mandatory setback of at least 2,500 feet around oil and gas operations.
Oil and gas companies said the measures would virtually eliminate drilling in Colorado, the nation's sixth-largest producer of oil and gas. A report from Bloomberg News said operators extracted about $10 billion of oil and gas from the Centennial State last year.
The fate of the measures was a widely discussed topic at last week's 28th Annual Rocky Mountain Energy Summit (RMES), organized by the Colorado Oil & Gas Association (COGA) (Denver, Colorado).
Though the measures failed to get 5% of eligible voter signatures, the measures came close: Initiative 75 had about 79,634 valid signatures based on a random sample conducted by the secretary of state. Initiative 78 garnered an estimated 77,109 valid signatures.
It's not clear whether the ballot proponents will go to court to challenge the secretary of state's decision. "We were outspent 35:1 by oil industry opponents and faced an unprecedented effort to keep the measures off the ballot," Laurie Petrie, Food & Water Watch's Rocky Mountain director, said in a statement. "The enthusiasm of this citizen-led effort has not been dampened, and we will continue to fight to protect the health of Coloradans, and the natural beauty of our state, from fracking."
In a research note on Monday, David Tameron, an analyst with Wells Fargo, said an appeal of the secretary of state's ruling "would appear to be futile."
If either initiative was certified for the November ballot, sources at the COGA conference vowed to go to court to keep the initiatives off the ballot. The measures were amendments to the state's constitution.
Although both sides took out paid advertisements to make their point, it appears the respective campaigns waged their battle more on a face-to-face, person-to-person level. CRED, an industry-funded outreach organization, knocked on 1.5 million doors across the state, Karen Crummy, a CRED spokesperson, told Industrial Info.
Two years ago, CRED and the industry battled against similar ballot measures until Governor John Hickenlooper proposed an 11th hour compromise that kept the measures off the ballot at about the time crude oil prices were hovering around $100 per barrel. For more on that, see August 7, 2014, article - Oil & Gas Industry Sees Brisk Business in Colorado after Withdrawal of Voter Initiatives. However, the governor's task force did not produce results that satisfied drilling foes, who vowed to return to the ballot initiative to amend the state's constitution. For more on that, see May 22, 2015, article - Initiatives to Limit Fracking Appear Headed to Colorado's 2016 Ballot. In Colorado, at least, the industry has long struggled with winning the public trust on hydraulic fracturing. For more on that, see August 11, 2015, article - Billions of Dollars at Risk if Oil & Gas Industry Can't Do a Better Job Telling its Story.
At the COGA conference last week, speakers and audience members pondered how best to act when a significant portion of the public appears to oppose hydraulic fracturing and oil and gas development. Gary Sernovitz, a managing director at Line Rock Partners (Westport, Connecticut), a private equity fund specializing in energy, told about 1,000 attendees at the conference only about 25% of Democrats said they supported hydraulic fracturing in a Gallup poll taken in March. That poll showed 55% of Republicans said they supported it, while only 35% of Independents said they did.
"It's pretty surprising how unpopular fracking is," Sernovitz said August 24. In asking a question of Sernovitz, an audience member said, "We've tried to educate the public on the facts, but that didn't seem to work. What should we do?" He recommended trying to engage the public on a more visceral, emotional level.
"Natural gas is decarbonizing the air faster than any regulation could do, and the U.S. reduced its carbon dioxide emissions faster than any other nation on earth due to natural gas," he recommended. "If people care about the environment, they should care that natural gas is helping clean it up."
Another line of engagement: national security. Sernovitz said overseas oil and gas producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia win and U.S. national security loses if fracking's foes win the day.
A third line of emotional engagement: local jobs and the economy. Colorado's Oil & Gas industry employs about 100,000 people, Sernovitz said, and most if not all of them would lose their jobs if initiatives 75 and 78 were adopted by voters. "There would be a multibillion-dollar loss to the state's economy if we lost the opportunity to develop oil and gas in Colorado." He and other speakers pointed out the appliances of modern life, such as cell phones, would not be available at a low cost if oil and gas development were restricted.
Another speaker at the COGA event, Chip Rimer, senior vice president for U.S. onshore at Noble Energy Incorporated (NYSE:NBL) (Houston, Texas), was asked what the industry should do if those initiatives failed to make the ballot in November. "Step on the gas," he advised. "Don't let up. We have momentum. Continue being a safe and responsible operator. Continue to show you are a good steward."
Like all speakers at the COGA event, Rimer spoke before the Colorado Secretary of State rules on the validity of signatures for Initiatives 75 and 78. He told conference attendees that all of the company's Colorado employees have been through "cradle-to-grave training on the oil and gas operations so they could answer any questions or concerns a friend, relative or neighbor might have about hydraulic fracturing."
"Across the state, the industry has 100,000 ambassadors," Rimer told about 1,000 attendees Aug 24. "We need to listen better--listening is critical. And we need to practice message discipline: Our messages should be accurate, factual and consistent. But don't preach, because people don't want to be preached to."
"We want to make a difference one person at a time," the Noble executive continued. "We can't stop education and outreach, even if the ballot measures don't pass. Hydraulic fracturing gives us the energy we need, the economy we want and the environment we deserve." Noble, one of the largest operators in Colorado, provided funding for CRED and had high praise for its door-to-door outreach. Rimer said, "We didn't see much movement (in polls) when we just dropped material off at people's homes. But we saw a pretty substantial change with face-to-face engagement."
The industry has done a "poor job" engaging with stakeholders, Rimer said. "We lost an entire generation when we said, 'Trust us.' Now, our goal is to have people feel, 'I know people at Noble and they're good people,'" he said.
Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, five offices in North America and 10 international offices, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities. Follow IIR on: Facebook - Twitter - LinkedIn. For more information on our coverage, send inquiries to info@industrialinfo.com or visit us online at http://www.industrialinfo.com.
