Republicans and oil and gas industry officials had yet another chance to vent their outrage on Friday at the new production regulations being implemented at the statehouse. They took full advantage during a hearing that lasted eight-plus hours and combed through the dozens of new rules in “excruciatingly fine detail,” as the Denver Post reported.

The protests had no effect: the joint legislative Committee on Legal Services approved the rules bill largely unchanged. The Post also called Friday’s hearing “the first round” in the fight over the bill, a serious mischaracterization. We are well into the seventh round of this struggle, which has lasted through 18 months, multiple marathon hearings, ample public comment, and innumerable windy newspaper op-eds.

At this point, much of the battle comes down to a few legalistic points: what the final authority of the state’s Division of Wildlife will have over pending drilling applications, how much property rights will take precedence over environmental preservation, and whether the state can mandate requirements for energy production on federal lands.

In a sense all these fine details are moot: unless the state legislature suddenly flips Republican, the new regulations are certain to pass close to their current form.

The minority party, and the industry, are certainly entitled to
voice their objections; that’s why they call it “consultative
democracy.” At this point it should be noted that many of the
more strident objections are disingenuous.

No. 1 is the contention that these regulations were passed without industry input. In fact, the process to date has involved “testimony from 160 oil and gas lobbyists and 200 members of the public, and thousands of pages of testimony and comments,” the Post said in an op-ed calling for the rules’ passage.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which
includes energy-company officials (and in fact until its recent
overhaul was essentially a rubber-stamp outfit for the
industry), approved the regulations unanimously.

Second is the idea that Democrats, with Gov. Ritter’s
collusion, have used the new rules to ram through a one-sided
partisan agenda. In fact, the independent Office of Legislative
Legal Services, a nonpartisan legislative research agency,
found that in several cases the rules don’t go far enough to
balance safety, environmental preservation and surface owners’
rights with a healthy energy industry.

Most pernicious is the argument that the new regulations will
drive energy producers out of the state. This is illogical on
its face: oil and gas companies drill where the resources are,
and a few extra permitting obstacles are not going to change
that. Where are they going to go – Venezuela?

What’s more, there’s a large backlog of thousands of already
approved drilling permits that will not be affected by the new
regulations.

Republican lawmakers, and some vocal industry officials, claim
that the sharp reduction in drilling in Colorado is due to
“uncertainty” over the new rules, as well as the global
recession and the corresponding plunge in oil and gas prices.
To be sure, the rig count on the Western Slope is down – down
about 46% from the peak last summer. If the new state
regulations are to blame, the drop in Colorado should be
significantly bigger than the nationwide fall – and that’s not
the case.

According to the latest weekly rig count from Baker Hughes,
Inc., the nationwide figure stands at 1170. That’s off 43% from
the September peak of 2034 – statistically indistinguishable
from the decline in Colorado.

In opposing the new regulations, oil and gas industry officials
are just doing their jobs. But using spurious claims about the
effects of the rules doesn’t help their cause.