Fracking phobia fails in Colorado vote

Bloomberg/Fuel Fix:

Oil and natural gas explorers from Anadarko Petroleum to Synergy Resources have escaped a vote in Colorado that would’ve limited drilling and threatened to halt about $10 billion worth of oil and natural gas production a year.

A proposal known as Initiative No. 78, which would’ve restricted drilling near homes, fell about 21,000 valid signatures short of the total needed to qualify for a ballot vote, based on a projection in a statement from Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams. A measure allowing local governments to ban fracking also failed to attract enough valid signatures. Synergy, a Colorado oil and gas explorer, rose the most in more than seven months on the failed ballot initiatives.

The measures had threatened to wipe out oil and gas drilling in Colorado, the sixth-largest gas producer among U.S. states, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence analysis. Initiative No. 78 alone could’ve barred drilling across 90 percent of the state, where explorers extracted about $10 billion worth of oil and gas last year, the report showed.

Energy explorers would’ve left Colorado “in droves if voters ever approved ballot initiative 78,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Rob Barnett, Bernard Chen and Vincent Piazza said in the analysis on Monday. Drillers Anadarko, Encana, Noble Energy, PDC Energy and Whiting Petroleum account for about 70 percent of the state’s output, they said.
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This is a big loss for the anti-energy left and their attempt to frighten people about the fracking process.  It is also a good deal for the Colorado economy.  The fracking process has been used for decades and numerous studies have found there is little danger to the water supply from using it.