“I don’t think we can legally do that without grave consequences,” he told Colorado public radio after Food & Water Watch launched its latest campaign for a state-wide oil and gas development ban under the new banner of “Coloradans Against Fraccing”
“We can’t find any examples in Colorado, or more than one or two examples, where fraccing, in any sense, has caused harm or been sufficiently dangerous to the public that would justify us to ban it.”
He said banning fraccing would effectively eliminate 80-90% of Colorado’s $US20 billion a year oil and gas industry and, with it, threatens 100,000 jobs – but that’s just the start.
“You threaten that a court will come back and hold the state of Colorado liable for the financial penalties of that taking … it wouldn’t just be chambers of commerce; I think there would be all manner of elected officials who would say, ‘Boy, this puts the state in serious jeopardy’,” the Democrat said.
Hickenlooper also cited the delicate issue of mineral rights, which has been highlighted by a Colorado oil and gas task force.
“Gwen [Lachelt, co-chair of the task force] and the environmental community want to give the local elected leadership the right to say ‘no fraccing’ if there’s people around,” he said.
“That’s taking something away from that mineral right owner [that he or she has] had for all these years.”
He also went into bat for the industry, saying it had made continuous improvements to its “clean” credentials over the past 50 years.
It’s the second time the Democrat governor has defended the industry from the activist group inside seven months after he called an attempt by Food & Water Watch, among others, to put anti-energy initiatives on the state-wide ballot last July.
Back then, he called such measures “extreme” and “radical ideas that have no place in our state Constitution”
Hickenlooper’s stance is shared by fellow Democrat, California Governor Jerry Brown, who, while considered a hero by environmentalists, has rejected the “ideological bandwagons” of political activists who want to ban fraccing, saying at one point “they don’t know what they’re talking about”
