November 8, 2018
Environmental activists, oil and gas exploration companies and politicians were joined by an unexpected ally in their concern over a proposed Colorado law that would have had enormous impacts had the law passed, reducing oil output in the booming state by more than 50% within a few years.
Voters rejected Proposition 112 Tuesday night, stopping a plan to increase by five times the number of feet oil and gas developments would be set back from schools, hospitals and homes, from 500 feet to 2,500 feet.
Oil and gas companies had lobbied officials in Colorado — where the shale boom has the oil and gas business booming — and political committees had spent $30 million to help the defeat, but all the while the neighboring state of Wyoming was watching closely, officials wondering what effect the passage of the new law might have on them.
Operators in Wyoming produced more than 75 million barrels of oil last year, far less than Colorado’s 130 million, but officials wondered: If production in its neighboring state was mostly shut down, wouldn’t that mean intensified exploration and production in Wyoming?
A number of residents of the Cowboy State travel to work in the oil fields of Colorado, where there are already an estimated 100,000 people working the rigs and support companies, and while some E&P would have undoubtedly moved to Wyoming, officials were also concerned that passage of the Colorado law would reverse the path: Oil workers traveling to Wyoming, putting pressure on the petroleum employment market….