Tipton staffer goes to WEA, raises his ties to oil and gas companies

Colorado Congressman Scott Tipton’s close and questionable ties to oil companies have been a source of controversy since he was first elected. These include:

• His campaign contributions from oil companies;
• His financial investments in oil companies lobbying for the Keystone Pipeline – which he voted in favor of , and
• His ties to SG Interests, an oil company recently ordered to pay $275,000 in fines to settle a federal anti-trust law suit. In 2012, SG Interests started a super PAC to help re-elect Tipton.

Last week, Coloradoans were given another look behind the curtain at Rep. Tipton’s cozy relationship to Big Oil as a former Tipton aide announced he is joining Western Energy Alliance – an oil and gas lobbying group known to be critical of drilling safety standards.

Last year, WEA representatives testified on behalf of a Tipton bill that would mandate energy development as the primary use of all public lands – which would leave agriculture, hunting, fishing, outdoor recreation, and watershed interests out in the cold.

We understand that Rep. Tipton is influenced by his addiction to Big Oil contributions and the size of his personal net worth. But, at some point he needs to put the Coloradoans who elected him before big oil company CEOs.

Center for Western Priorities documentary series tells stories of drilling impacts on communities

The nonpartisan Center for Western Priorities (CWP) released its new LookWest interview series, today. According to a CWP release:

“Colorado communities struggling to balance their quality of life and local economies with industrial drilling and fracking operations are the focus of a new mini-documentary series by the Center for Western Priorities (CWP).”

The videos include interviews with residents and local business owners in Rifle and Paonia. People living in the Western Slope community of Rifle already have drilling in their midst, and are experiencing air and water challenges, explosions and truck traffic that make some of them wish they’d never moved there.

Farmers, ranchers and local business owners in Paonia talk about Colorado BLM’s plans to make 20,000+ acres in their area available for oil and gas leasing. Agriculture is a staple of the North Fork Valley, and the farmers and ranchers are scared of the impact drilling will have on their livelihoods.

“It’s an unknown practice,” said Jeff Schwartz, a Paonia farmer. “The risk that we’ve learned, that I’ve learned, about around the country is that there is a high risk of water contamination, and that’s a high risk to my family making a living.” Schwartz continued, “Anything that threatens the safety of our food crops threatens everything we do.”

Watch the Rifle video.

Watch the Paonia video.

CWP says that LookWest will continue visiting western communities to give people affected by oil and gas drilling a platform to have their stories heard. The videos will on the CWP website (www.westernpriorities.org) and YouTube page.

Natural Resources Committee can’t continue 112th’s land use approach in the 113th

“Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.”
— George Santayana, Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense

Over the course of the 112^th Congress, we stood witness to an approach to public land use that has swung spectacularly out of balance. Nowhere is this more evident than in the actions of the House Natural Resources Committee (HNRC). So as the curtain rises on the 113^th Congress, we wanted to take a moment to remember the past two years, lest the nation be condemned to repeat them.

Any lip service paid by the HNRC’s leadership to a balanced energy approach has been thoroughly disproven by their actions. Rather than take a smart approach that creates the most energy while protecting our water, communities and resources for future generations, Hastings and his team spent the 112^th falling over themselves to continue billions in taxpayer-funded handouts to oil and gas companies.

Under the leadership of Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) and his lieutenants, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) and Rep. Robert Bishop (R-Utah), HNRC focused on promoting the long-failed oil shale experiment. Their oil shale swindle would have given two million acres of public land to oil companies for oil shale speculation, while providing bargain basement royalty rates.

The bill (H.R. 3408), sponsored by Rep. Lamborn, would have provided no energy and no revenue to Americans – just millions in taxpayers handouts to the oil and gas industry.

House Speaker John Boehner named Lamborn’s bill a funding source for his highway bill, but an analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the bill would generate zero revenue.

The extremism of the HNRC didn’t stop there.  The committee also failed to address or even investigate the causes of the Deep Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, or to consider policies needed to prevent a further spill – despite the billions in damages BP caused. To the contrary, HNRC voted multiple times to lift the temporary safety moratorium that was installed following the Gulf of Mexico spill.

The majority on the HNRC also fought tirelessly to secure more of our public lands – forests, canyons, waterways – for oil and gas drilling. Hastings and his peers ignored facts like record-level production, decreased nominations by oil companies and that new deposits like the Bakken Field and Eagle Ford are located on privately owned land.

Instead, they continually complained that oil and gas companies, which reaped some $136 billion in profits in 2011, and collected billions in taxpayer-funded handouts, were being mistreated.

The HNRC also failed to protect any new public lands as wilderness. This makes the 112^th the first Congress since 1966 to not do so.

In the new Congress, Rep. Hastings remains HNRC chairman. Rep. Lamborn remains chair of the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, and Rep. Bishop will remain chairman of the re-named subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation. This means there is no reason to believe the balance of land use will correct itself.

Let’s hope that the American people remember the past, and let these politicians know they don’t want it repeated.