The truce is off. Let the negotiations begin again.
Leading Colorado environmental groups filed language Thursday for three sweeping ballot measures aimed at limiting the oil and gas industry in the state, openly declaring them a blocking effort to as many as a half-dozen equally sweeping proposals supported by oil interests.
The potential ballot battle, alongside a number of anti-oil and gas bills still under debate in the legislature this year, is a renewal of the election year games of chicken from 2018, 2020 and 2022. In some past elections, environmental groups and oil and gas representatives agreed to take competing measures off the table so long as it was a bilateral disarmament.
Gov. Jared Polis, who has said in the past he wants to give existing oil and gas pollution limits time to work, encouraged the sides to stand down. He even declared an end to the state’s so-called oil and gas wars in 2019 when he signed a regulatory overhaul into law.
Oil and gas interests are spending millions backing ballot measures and running TV ads attacking bills being debated this legislative session, said Jessica Goad with Conservation Colorado, one leader in the environmental coalition that filed the measures Thursday. The coalition also includes the Sierra Club, Colorado GreenLatinos and others.
“Our intent with this is to open a conversation with industry,” Goad said. “There’s lots of moves in the legislative session around oil and gas bills and policy. So, yes, we’re thinking about this all as a whole and feeling like we need to use all the tools available to us, including the legislature and bills, but also the ballot process right now, to be able to have a conversation with the industry and their allies.”
The deadline for filing state ballot proposals to appear on the November ballot is fast approaching. They would be heard at the state’s Title Board in April, leaving time to continue any talks over bills at the legislative session that ends in early May. The environmental groups’ filing may appear last-minute, but Goad said they are up against an industry making late moves of its own.
“From our perspective, the oil and gas industry and their allies have filed seven measures that could be really devastating to our climate and clean energy progress,” Goad said. “And they were doing that as late as last week. We had no choice but to use every tool available to us, including filing these measures here today.”
The filings are a “backstop” to protecting clean air and water, she said.
The three ballot proposals the environmental coalition said it filed Thursday include:
- “Oil and Gas Accountability,” making the oil and gas industry strictly liable for any damages to health or property from spills, fires, earthquakes caused by hydraulic fracturing, contamination of surface or groundwater or other hazards. (Strict liability is a legal standard meaning the plaintiff doesn’t have to show a direct causal link, only that the damage occurred.)
- “Clean Air and Water Protection,” giving Colorado residents more power to enforce oil and gas regulations in state courts to protect air and water, while also requiring oil and gas companies at fault to pay the citizen’s attorney fees.
- “Right to a healthy environment,” putting into state law a personal right to clean air and water, and to bring lawsuits if the state “undermines their right.”
Getting a measure on the November ballot, even if the coalition’s proposed language is approved by the Title Board, won’t be easy. It takes collecting roughly 125,000 voter signatures per each measure over a few months to qualify, a feat that typically costs millions of dollars.
Oil and gas interests, meanwhile, have filed multiple titles that go after state government support for cleaner energy technology. Three have been approved for gathering signatures. One is focused on blocking incentives or government mandates for clean energy for installing heat pumps or hot water heaters running on renewable electricity. Two would prohibit the state or local governments from dictating what kind of energy hookups are offered to the individual consumer, in part responding to some local efforts to ban new natural gas pipelines into subdivisions, in favor of renewable electricity or solar power.
The American Petroleum Institute is spending nearly $2 million to air a TV ad claiming that some bills being considered this year will shut down oil and gas production entirely in the state. The ads will air through at least the end of March. On ballot measures, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum have each donated nearly $1.5 million to the issue committee Protect Colorado, which works to protect the oil and gas industry’s interests.
The environmental groups also believe some of the industry-backed measures would interfere with state and Public Utilities Commission work to transition all Colorado utility generation to solar, wind, battery storage and other renewable, clean forms of energy.
State officials will be reviewing ballot language and petition signatures at the same time the legislature makes choices on a host of bills aimed at further cutting ozone precursors and greenhouse gas emissions in Colorado.
One in particular that has raised the ire of oil and gas trade groups is a proposed ban on all new oil and gas drilling in Colorado, to be phased out by 2030, which is up for debate in a legislative committee next week. That proposed new drilling ban has not been backed by many of the mainstream environmental groups in Colorado. Instead, that coalition backs a package of bills that includes a “pause” on new oil and gas drilling during the summer high-ozone months.
Other measures in that package of bills would reform the air pollution permitting process in Colorado, boost enforcement and fines of air pollution violations, and reform the powerful Air Quality Control Commission to be more weighted toward environmental justice advocacy.
Polis and other state leaders have called for more measured regulation of the oil and gas industry since a contentious anti-fracking ballot measure lost by a wide margin in 2018. That proposal would have required much wider setbacks between development and new oil and gas wells to better protect human health. Industry groups said it would have been an effective ban on new drilling.