EDITORIAL: “Time to embrace Colorado’s oil and gas economy”
“Oil and gas production has generated over $15 billion a year in income for Coloradans in recent years, according to COGA, supporting over 300,000 jobs. That’s nearly 8% of state employment.”
EDITORIAL: Time to embrace Colorado’s oil and gas economy
The Gazette editorial board
Congratulations to Lynn Granger, who, as The Gazette reported Tuesday, will be the next president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. The group, known as COGA, serves as the preeminent voice for one of our state’s most significant industries, and Granger will prove an effective leader.
Now the regional director of the American Petroleum Institute, Granger brings an impressive skill set to the table. She’ll need it, given the work she has cut out for her.
Oil and gas play a most unusual role in Colorado — as windfall and whipping boy.
The state long has been one of the nation’s top producers of oil and natural gas — the fossil fuels that power our planes, trains and most automobiles, and heat most of our homes. Oil and gas production has generated over $15 billion a year in income for Coloradans in recent years, according to COGA, supporting over 300,000 jobs.
That’s nearly 8% of state employment. The oil and gas sector contributes nearly $50 billion a year toward the state’s overall economy — topping 11% of Colorado’s economic output — and generates around $2 billion a year in state and local tax revenue.
And yet, Colorado’s political establishment fears and loathes our state’s oil and gas economy — and perpetually seeks to smother it. Blindly devoted to an extreme-green dogma, Colorado’s political leadership is committed to combating a climate “crisis” at any cost — putting the squeeze on oil and gas production to the peril of jobs and the economy as well as energy’s cost and reliability.
The upshot is an oil-and-gas-rich state — a land of bounty and opportunity — led by a siege mentality. If only the state’s politicians and policymakers would come out of their bunker into the light of day, they’d see that times are changing. For the better.
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Other energy-rich states are upbeat about their prospects as the incoming presidential administration and its designated energy secretary, Colorado energy visionary Chris Wright, have high hopes for oil and gas.
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President-elect Donald Trump aims to boost the nation’s production of oil and gas to meet rising global demand and shore up U.S. energy security. Toward that end, the new administration promises to expand oil and gas exploration on public lands and boost offshore oil and gas leasing.
The Trump administration also is likely to lift the departing Biden administration’s moratorium on new U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas. That would be a boon to Colorado, in particular, with its formidable natural gas reserves.
The pursuit of a diverse, “all of the above” portfolio of energy sources for our country — drawing on renewables as well as reliable and dominant fossil fuels — is prudent and overdue. It now is more likely after Nov. 5’s presidential verdict.
Instead of flogging its oil and gas economy, Colorado’s leadership would do well to embrace it anew. Our state, and the world, depend on it.
the gazette editorial board
