Colorado Rally for Oil and Gas

Denver Post - Politics West, John Ingold has news of "rallies" against  new environmental regulations that haven't even been drafted yet. 

The $23-billion-a-year Colorado oil and gas industry flexed its considerable muscle today, turning out hundreds of people for a rally at the state Capitol. The event coincided with similar rallies in Greeley, Grand Junction and Trinidad, according to the Colorado Oil and Gas association, which organized the rallies. And it served as a preview to the coming smackdown over proposed new regulations on the industry that are expected to be released later this month.

Bold bits mine.  Shouldn't that be smackdown of ?

“We come here with a simple, important and final ask of our state government , ‘Please don’t rule us out,’” Meg Collins, the president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, said in echoing the rally’s theme. Industry advocates have said the new rules, which seek to impose greater protections for the environment, could drive up the cost of doing business in the state and force companies to leave.

  If they leave, they'll be back because the oil and gas will still be there. 

The oil and gas industry employs 70,000 people in Colorado, and a grim state economic forecast on Thursday noted that the oil and gas industry helped keep the news from being grimmer. “We cannot afford to kick the state economic leader out of the state,” said Rep. Cory Gardner, a Yuma Republican who was one of several lawmakers to attend the rally. “We will protect our air, our land and our water, and we will do it be (sic) working with the people of Colorado instead of hurting them.”

Funny how this is posed as all about Colorado.  It is almost like pretending energy companies are sports teams threatening to move away if they don't get what they want.  Only this is bigger.  Go Colorado!

Proponents of the new rule-making process called the rally rhetoric hogwash. “I don’t think they get hurt; I think that is baloney,” said House Majority Leader Alice Madden, D-Boulder. “They can say whatever they want, but factually I don’t think there’s any substance to what they say.”

Madden pointed to a recent announcement by energy giant Chevron that it will invest $7.3 billion in Colorado over the next decade, as well as a $1 billion investment by a smaller company. “That’s not a sign of an industry getting ready to leave,” said TJ Brown, the Front Range field director for the Colorado Environmental Coalition. “There’s no indication they're going to be going anywhere.”

Which is sort of sad too.   "He can't take it with him and God's not making any more."