Will deliver policy recommendations to Gov. Hickenlooper this week

The Colorado Oil and Gas Task Force is holding its final meeting today in order to discuss amendments to the recommendations it plans to send to Governor Hickenlooper later this week. The task force is meeting from 9 a.m. till 4 p.m. Feb. 24.

No votes will be taken on the various amendments today, and only the author of a proposal will be allowed to make amendments to his or her proposal after it is discussed. The 21-member task force will take the final vote this Friday via phone call.

Last September, Gov. Hickenlooper created the task force as part of a compromise to remove both pro- and anti-hydrocarbon development initiatives from the November ballot. The taskforce was created in order to give recommendations to the governor, but has no regulatory power of its own. A full list of the task force’s members can be found by clicking here.

A two-thirds vote, fourteen members of the task force, is required for a proposal to be included in the final recommendations sent to the governor’s office. Any recommendation that does not receive the required fourteen votes can be included in a minority report.

Protesters at the meeting

Protesters stood outside the Colorado Convention Center today, putting on a rally in opposition to any fracing in the state of Colorado. During the course of the morning session, the protesters filed into the conference room where the task force was meeting in order to hand out literature in hopes of swaying task force members towards voting against regulations that would allow hydraulic fracturing.

Colorado oil and gas task force

The task force was not taking public comment during its final meeting today, and asked that the protesters hand their material to a staffer who would then distribute it to the task force. The protesters waited quietly, lined up in the conference room, until the task force finished discussing an amendment to a recommendation regarding surface owners’ rights before handing their booklets to the staffer and filing out of the room.


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