Guv intends to appoint new faces to oil board

By Charles Ashby
Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Gov. John Hickenlooper appears poised to replace all but two people on the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

The Democratic governor, who is a former petroleum geologist, is nearly a month late in making appointments to the nine-member commission.

Except for Mike King and Chris Urbina, executive directors of the departments of Natural Resources and Public Health and Environment, respectively, Hickenlooper has not yet said who else will sit on the all-important panel that oversees oil and gas production in the state. The executive directors of those departments, by law, are required to be voting members of the commission.

A list of the governor’s planned appointees from inside the administration recently obtained by The Daily Sentinel indicates Hickenlooper intends to reappoint only two existing commissioners, Grand Junction environmental scientist Richard Alward and Hesperus rancher Thomas Compton.

That means the one environmental commissioner and the three industry representatives who were on the panel before all commission members’ four-year terms expired July 1 won’t be asked to stay on.

The list includes three new appointees: Denver resident Winston “Perry” Pearce, manager of government affairs with ConocoPhillips/Burlington Resources, Weld County Commissioner Douglas Rademacher, and Littleton resident John Benton, vice president of Rex Energy.

By law, the commission must have three people with industry experience, and one each must have knowledge in agricultural production, reclamation, environmental protection or be a local government official. Of those, two must hail from the Western Slope.

Pearce and Benton would represent the industry, while Rademacher would be the required local government representative. The Western Slope members are Compton and Alward, who also serves as the reclamation expert.

The list indicates the administration still is looking for an environmental representative and one other industry expert.

Benton, Compton and Alward confirmed to The Daily Sentinel they have asked the governor to be on the commission. Rademacher and Pearce either could not be reached or didn’t return messages for comment.

Excluding the executive director positions, the law limits the commission to having no more than four people from the same political party. Benton, Compton and Rademacher are Republicans. Alward and Pearce are Democrats.

Because of the depressed nature of the industry in Colorado and the job losses as a result, the governor’s appointments to the commission have become among the most anticipated of his young administration, particularly on the Western Slope. While some lawmakers called on Hickenlooper to reverse strict new regulations on drilling that altered the commission’s focus toward environmental protections over down-well concerns, the governor repeatedly said that won’t happen.

Benton said he agrees it shouldn’t.

“I don’t see any wholesale rollbacks as being any benefit,” said Benton, who was a finalist to be the commission’s director, but the position went to David Neslin, who was rehired to that job last month. “Whether we like them or not in the industry, there was a significant amount of effort that went into creating those regulations. I don’t think they are necessarily broken, but I do think there’s room for improvement.”

Benton said he doesn’t want to create an adversarial relationship with people inside or outside the industry, likening a commissioner’s job to a tightrope that only can be walked by maintaining a balance between increasing production and protecting the environment.

“You’ve got folks who are concerned the rules are so excessive they’re stifling job creation, and the industry brings a lot of tax base here,” Benton said. “But you have to balance that against the long-term. What impact will development have? We’re much better educated about that as an industry than we were 10 or 15 years ago.”

Compton, too, said the new commission doesn’t need to make major changes to the rules, but he agreed some will need altering, citing some regulations governing drilling in Weld County and statewide reclamation rules as examples.

Compton said he wants to alter the rules to ensure oil and gas companies take care of their drill sites during production, making it easier for them to reclaim the land in 20 to 30 years when wells reach the end of their life.

“It’s very challenging trying to reach the balance that the new oil and gas regulations and the new mission of the commission is supposed to reach,” he said. “We worked pretty hard to put together some regulations that would help us achieve that balance. But no matter what the regulations say, it still takes people who are willing to look at the big picture as well as the little picture.”

The governor could announce his picks for the commission as soon as today..