By Mark Jaffe | Colorado Sun
A bill to ban new oil and gas drilling in Colorado after 2030 — which sparked a spate of industry TV ads with dire warnings — was rejected Thursday by a bipartisan majority of the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee after a marathon hearing.
The legislation, Senate Bill 159 — sponsored by two Democratic senators, Kevin Priola, of Henderson, and Sonya Jaquez Lewis, of Boulder County — would have required state oil and gas regulators to stop issuing new drilling permits starting in 2030, with those permits to be used by 2032.
Faced with projections of potentially severe impacts of climate change and the Front Range’s continuing struggles to curb ozone pollution, the bill was a necessary step to transition to cleaner energy, Priola said.