Those who lament they never have enough places to drill and scrape have a narrative about the huggers that love trees more than people. They can get vicious with their accusations. A local publisher castigated me for depriving our children of education dollars and the hospital of revenue because I legally opposed an exemption for a Williams project on a Bureau of Land Management Area of Critical Environmental Concern west of Rawlins.

The concept of stewardship using the best available technology has been rejected time and again. If those principles had been adopted, we would not be facing the choices we are now.

Our governor recently spoke against rules limiting methane releases, even though the producers in our state have egregiously spewed it into our atmosphere for years.

When the Atlantic Rim coal-bed methane area was developed, Yellowstone-like mud pots bubbled throughout the riparian areas there. But, that was only a small stream of the methane that sniffer technology found gushing into the atmosphere there. In fact, some joked that there could be a geyser of fire if a match was struck. Ironically, those seeps had been happening for years, and yet developers and regulators ignored the fractured geology of the area as they maximized drilling. READ MORE