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January 07, 2010 02:01 AM UTC

State GOP Attack Ken Salazar, as Sect. Announces New O&G Policies

  • 20 Comments
  • by: ClubTwitty

(Gee, the timing of the attack on Secretary Salazar seems so…coincidental, doesn’t it? – promoted by Middle of the Road)

The Colorado Senate Republican spin machine that up until a day or two ago was churning out near daily news releases attacking Bill Ritter, has suddenly targeted Sect. Ken Salazar.

Josh Penry is wasting no time in his promise to continue his blindly partisan attacks, no matter the target or intervening facts. The one-time gubernatorial candidate and retiring state senator takes the leading role in the latest e-blast purportedly from ‘COLORADO STATE SENATE/STATE CAPITOL/DENVER 80203’

Denver, Colorado – Senate Republican Leader Josh Penry (R-Grand Junction) today blasted Interior Secretary Ken Salazar after the Obama appointee announced a plan to impose onerous new regulations on the development of clean, domestic natural gas across some 260 million acres of federal land.

Like state-level rules authored by Governor Bill Ritter and approved by the Democrat-controlled state legislature last year, Salazar’s proposal would erect additional bureaucratic hurdles that energy companies would have to clear before drilling on federal lands.

Glad soon-to-be-former Sen. Penry is such a careful steward of the public’s dime, as I am sure he would never use the public office to electioneer or to shill for a certain industry. That would be unseemly indeed.

Sect. Salazar, even as the GOP is servicing the oil and gas industry, seems to be working in the public interest, today dodging questions on if he will run for Governor and instead announcing new oil and gas leasing policies.

These policies (which involve leasing rather than developing and thus are not really analogous to the state regulations, something I suspect Penry understands) has the GOP oil and gas waterboys state legislators so in a tizzy.  

The trend under Bush was to lease anything and everything that the industry ‘nominated’ if it wasn’t specifically prohibited from drilling, often under land use plans that were decades out of date.

Sect. Salazar announced today that that would change, according to stories in many newspapers, including this pretty detailed article in the Deseret News:

“The previous administration’s ‘anywhere, anyhow’ policy on oil and gas development ran afoul of communities, carved up the landscape and fueled costly conflicts that created uncertainty for investors and industry,” Salazar said.

The basic gist of the changes seem to be new requirements for more thorough review prior to offering public lands up to oil and gas development.

…That deeper analysis will allow field offices to study whether drilling may adversely affect wilderness values, air quality, archaeological values, watersheds, wildlife and nearby land uses, and how to lessen adverse effects. They will use interdisciplinary teams to evaluate each parcel, allow public comment, and, when necessary, visit the parcels.

“Some BLM officials in the past were told that their job, first and foremost, was to sit at their desk and to review and approve industry drilling permit applications, often without adequate time to inspect those permits and ensure compliance with the law,” Salazar complained.

Salazar said that led during the George W. Bush administration to allowing leases in “areas that were in municipal watersheds, areas that involved important wildlife habitats, lands with wilderness characteristics, and lands that were close to national parks,” and resulted in 40 percent of all leases in 2008 being protested as opposed to just 1 percent that was protested in 1998.

BLM Director Bob Abbey said, “We do anticipate there may be a slowdown in the reviewing the number of parcels that have been nominated for leasing to allow us to conduct these reviews,” and some areas where drilling previously was allow no longer will be.

Hoping for a windfall in their campaign coffers, the state GOP apparently sees no risk in peddling their political flesh to the boys from Houston (figuratively speaking, of course).

Meanwhile bands of tea partisans appear to be talking revolt, with one tribe recently endorsing the Cowboy Colonel (McConnell) for the 3rd CD over mainstream Republican Scott Tipton.  

And maybe a wealth of oil and gas money (and c4s) can buy enough votes to bridge the political divide between the baggers and the middle, and stitch together a GOP win.  But as Sect. Salazar does his job with an eye toward the broader public interest, the Colorado GOP and it’s tired cheerleading for oil and gas suddenly looks weak and frightened.

 

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20 thoughts on “State GOP Attack Ken Salazar, as Sect. Announces New O&G Policies”

    1. Spokesmen for the Interior Department declined to comment Tuesday, except to say that Mr. Salazar would hold a teleconference Wednesday to announce “several initiatives to reform the onshore oil and gas leasing program” administered by the BLM. In addition to reining in the practice of granting categorical exclusions, Mr. Salazar is expected to assign Assistant Interior Secretary Wilma Lewis to lead a broad internal review of the BLM’s permitting practices.

      http://online.wsj.com/article/…

      1. True, your comments typically put me to sleep but still…

        Oh and because the point seems to have eluded you, we were talking about McInnis and Company (ie. Penry) here and their sudden and deep “concern” that prompted a press release. Pay attention, dumbass.  

        1. ran a FP article on his adoption of the Ritter Drilling and Job Kill Policies.

          It’s tough when you don’t read the WSJ to understand, but its known as the leading business journal in the US.  Kinda like The Economist, but a daily.

          1. Salazar really got hammered – not.

            Unfortunately for the GOP (and for you), the Wall Street Journal retains at least some journalistic integrity on its front page, and provided some strong support for reforming the regulations in addition to a couple of whiny quotes by the drill-baby-drill faction.

          2. But this statement is demonstrably false:

            the Ritter Drilling and Job Kill Policies

            Others have explained this far better than I, but still it has no effect on the cognitive ability of those who don’t want to understand.

            But, here I go again …

          3. …is that drilling permits — not just applications, but permits — were up in December. Gas companies are saying it’s because of a rebound in gas prices aided by completion and operation of Rockies Express. Gee, where have we read that before?

            Oh, maybe here on Pols and anywhere else providing information for people interested in a debate on facts rather than fear and falsehoods.

      2. I’ve got more than a few rebuttal points in regards to your misguided ‘creaming on’ article from the WSJ (as in the announcement today was about leasing reforms, not permitting processes) but alas I need to go celebrate a Dem victory in this year’s Governor race.  

  4. The trend under Bush was to lease anything and everything that the industry ‘nominated’ if it wasn’t specifically prohibited from drilling, often under land use plans that were decades out of date.

    The situation was actually worse than just that, not only was BLM leasing damn near every acre nominated by industry, but they were also nominating parcels for auction themselves on a constant basis, an action that should have been done away with in this package of leasing reforms.

    That said, this is a huge step in the right direction.  BLM is finally going to have the direction to adhere to NEPA and FLPMA and the public will now be able to exercise their statutory right to comment on this process.

    BLM is staffed by great people, now they are finally given the ability to do their jobs.

    However, I would never expect someone like Sen. Penry to understand protecting some of our resources from undue damage as a good thing.

    1. I’d lay even odds that upper level Bush administration officials (possibly including Bush himself) were actually suggesting some of the parcels in sensitive areas.  The number of leases and exploratory permits issued right on the borders of National Parks and Monuments (and in some cases inside the Monuments) defies definition by simple O&G corporate greed.

  5. Are the Republicans still paying Dick Wad to lose year after year? What happened to his two cycle plan to take back Colorado? Has it turned into an eight cycle plan? By then, he’d have made a cool $4 million of all you suckers!

    You all are getting pimped and don’t even know it.

  6. and their spokespeople hint at communism and government takeovers…here is what Sect. Salazar is implementing as far as new leasing review at DOI:

    Among the proposed changes:

    • Master leasing and development planning, which would comprehensively analyze proposed areas for drilling, assessing issues such as wildlife, watershed and land-use issues.

    • A required on-the-ground assessment by bureau staff of all parcels offered for sale.

    • Environmental reviews of all parcels with public review.

    Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/news…

    One might have imagined–that as part of the deal in developing and making large bank off of mining the public’s resources from the public’s land–such reviews were already standard?  

    No–under the Bush administration DOI/BLM leased/attempted to lease Colorado state parks, Colorado wildlife refuges, national wildlife refuges, municipal watersheds, national forest roadless areas that should have been protected by the 2001 roadless rule, recreation areas, iconic landscapes, wetlands… the list goes on and on and on.  Kudos to Sect. Salazar for putting the public back in public lands, and returning conservation as a core value of our land and resource management agencies.

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