By CEN Staff

In a somewhat surprising interview with the Grand Junction Sentinel over the weekend,– Gov. Ritter emphasized the importance of the natural gas industry to Colorado’s economic future.

The comment was one of many which Ritter had planned to make before Club 20 members at the Western Slope organization’s spring meeting in Grand Junction on Saturday. However, a snowstorm prevented him from making the trip by plane.

The Governor’s verbal support of the natural gas industry comes in the wake of more stringent drilling rules recently becoming law in the state. Ritter has been criticized by many in the industry and Republican lawmakers for backing the new regulations, which they say is driving energy companies out of Colorado and hitting the oil and gas sector hard during a major recession.

“We’ve become a national and worldwide leader with our New Energy Economy,” Ritter had planned to say in his remarks to the Club 20 audience, “And let me be clear, Colorado’s clean-burning natural gas sector is a key part of the New Energy Economy.”

In the interview with the Sentinel, the Governor also said he believed that Western Colorado’s energy economy “may recover a bit faster” than the rest of the country as it climbs out of the national recession — and key to local economic recovery is completion of the Ruby Pipeline, which will carry Piceance Basin natural gas from Opal, Wyo., to West Coast and Pacific Northwest markets. Gas from the Piceance Basin and elsewhere in the region gets a lower price because of the lack of pipeline capacity to move it to lucrative markets in more populous regions of the country.

Ritter said he urged prompt approval of the Ruby Pipeline in a
recent letter he wrote to the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission.

In his planned remarks, Ritter  said “I’m optimistic about the
future of the energy industry, the future of the Western Slope
and the future of Colorado.” The national economy likely will
show signs of recovery by the first quarter of 2010 or even the
last quarter of this year, he said.

Elsewhere in the interview, the Govenor said his administration
has begun discussing using the coal-fired Cameo power plant in
De Beque Canyon as a 1 megawatt coal and concentrated solar
plant. Such a plant could produce four times the electricity
generated by wind farms built on the eastern plains, he said in
the interview. There can be clean coal from facilities that
combine sources such as solar and coal, he said.

Nuclear energy was another topic the Governor addressed.
“Renewable energy is only part of our portfolio,” he said. “I
don’t discount that nuclear may be part” of the Colorado energy
economy.

He pointed out that the issue of how to deal with spent rods
from nuclear plants has inhibited the build-out of nuclear
power. But in other parts of the world, nuclear plants have
been safely built and operated and we should be able to do the
same here in the United States.