Mountain West Strategies

You Know the Drill – Newsweek. Why is America lowballing itself? “There is a lot of blame to go around when it comes to how much the American taxpayer is getting for all this drilling,” says Peter Kolbenschlag, an energy consultant with Mountain West Strategies in Paonia, Colo. “What we’re seeing right now is the more »

Busting Out of Boom & Bust – July/August 2013 – Sierra Magazine – Sierra Club. …Pitched battles between communities, industry, and the federal government aren’t efficient approaches to public-lands management, Kolbenschlag says. But citizens have few options as long as leasing and drilling proceed under outdated plans and policies that fail to consider how Western more »

Fly-over Stresses Importance of Alternative Oil & Gas Plan | KVNF Public Radio. The fight to keep negative impacts of gas drilling out of the North Fork Valley got a boost as community members got a glimpse of the area from a higher plane. On Monday The Western Slope Conservation Center and Eco-Flight offered two more »

It must have been a sight to behold. Colorado undoubtedly had seen bigger wildfires, even bigger blazes during that very summer of 2002 alone. But the imposing Big Fish fire was all the more extraordinary, set against the dramatic backdrop of Trappers Lake and the striking Flat Tops Wilderness surrounding it. All told, 17,000 acres more »

Colorado’s North Fork Valley has become a leader in sustainable agriculture and home to the largest concentration of organic farms in the Rocky Mountains. On Dec. 8, the Bureau of Land Management announced that 30,000 acres in 22 parcels along the North Fork were being nominated for oil and gas development. That meant fracking. Read more »

A federal judge has ruled in favor of environmental groups in their lawsuit challenging the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to lease more than 50,000 acres on the Roan Plateau outside Rifle for oil and gas development.

Counties hide oil shale meeting
It must have been a lot more fun…for commissioners to organize a clandestine gathering for themselves…and lobbyists from a so-far imaginary industry that claims to know how to turn the region’s oil shale into gasoline…By acting this way, officials… salivating over the very thin prospect of an oil shale boom succeed only in undermining their own … case.

The House of Representatives, already holding title as the most anti-environment House ever, today added to the list — the Domestic Energy Production Act, H.R. 4480.