| By KJ Meyer - Jan 9th, 2008 at 10:16 am EST |
In a startling report out yesterday, two Colorado Oil Companies have already begun to cry fowl over proposed new rules for their industry. EnCana Oil sent out letters to non-profits that it has supported, citing the dire consequences of the company’s charitable funding program if new environmental and health regulations were required of the industry.
Really???
According to Rocky Mountain News the letter stated:
The rules could affect "the company's ability to partner with organizations such as yours that meet the needs of the community on a daily basis," ….
The EnCana letter drew criticism from Bruce Christensen, who runs a nonprofit in Glenwood Springs to aid developmentally disabled people. - Never in 30 years of his work has he encountered such a request from a donor, he said.
"I would like to think people who support the nonprofits do it because they support their mission and are trying to be a good neighbor within the community - and I don't know that those are connected with lobbying on energy regulation,
Meanwhile, Williams Oil sent letters to its employees and contractors describing the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) as trying to –
"railroad" the new rulemaking process by passing the new rules "in stealth." The memo described the rules as a "multi-tiered bureaucratic nightmare" and potentially "ruinous to our industry.
So the long awaited push back from the Oil & Gas industry has begun. We can only guess what other types of misinformation our industry front group friends over at Americans for American Energy will be distributing in the near future.
This is a critical time for the COGCC as they prepare to institute new rules for regulating the industry. The state is providing an even greater level of transparency in getting feedback about proposed rules and better regulation of the environmental and health effects is desperately needed. This is not the time for Oil and Gas Companies to start putting out false claims and inflating fear in the eyes of citizens, workers, and public leaders.
Lets hope they get their act together.
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By sending threatening letters to nonprofit organizations is an effective means to affect the results from the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) will ultimately backfire.
This is inline with my previous post on the Chamber of Commerce acting like a Mafia crime family rather than like good corporate "citizens" to the community because threatening politicians is not the way to build long term goals. The Chamber of Commerce may achieve it's short term objectives at the expense of resentment and anger by Americans and their elected representatives.
Public humiliation and a retraction of these letters should be the minimum goal of the COGCC. Allowing this kind of fear and smear tactic to go unchallenged is unacceptable.
While these actions are deplorable, it is a confirmation of how deeply engrained these companies are in the GOP culture enshrined by Karl Rove and Dick Wad****. This could also be an early indicator of how Colorado businesses and industry may be positioning themselves to act through 527s leading up to the November election.