News

With the Colorado Secretary of State’s office foreshadowing that an announcement on a pair of anti-fracking ballot measures will likely come next week, the state’s Democrat Governor John Hickenlooper told Colorado Oil and Gas Association’s Rocky Mountain Energy Summit attendees that he thinks the measures will not meet the necessary number of signatures to appear on the ballot. From Hickenlooper’s remarks:

“My full assumption is that neither of those two initiatives are going to get, going to have the signatures. I don’t think either one is going to be on the ballot and I think that’s a reflection of all the efforts put in by both sides to sit and listen to each other and say, alright, how can we respect private property, how can we acknowledge that we are going to move toward a cleaner environment but at the same time realize that these are jobs and this is inexpensive energy and it helps household budgets, that there has got to be a balance in our conclusions and if we do that well enough then we avoid these gigantic battles at the ballot and we move on with the situation that New York state is, or perhaps Denton, well Denton Texas is or perhaps New Mexico. And I think that’s the lesson learned in Colorado is that you roll up your sleeves and you listen hard enough to the other side and say where is the common ground we all accept that we want a clean environment so how do we get there and still make sure we have inexpensive energy”

The governor is not the first to predict that the anti-energy measures will ultimately fail to make the ballot. Shortly after activist groups turned in their petition signatures for review, political specialist Shaun Boyd with CBS 4 in Denver reported on the likelihood that activists have fallen short in collecting the necessary number of signatur...