Proposition 112 In Colorado -- For The Record -- October 25, 2018

Updates

October 26, 2018: setback proposition will pass if polls are correct. Polling shows 52% of Colorado folks in favor of setbacks.

Original Post 

Two readers sent me a link to this article / op-ed piece regarding Proposition 112 in Colorado. The second reader wondered whether I was aware of this issue since he has not seen one post on the blog regarding Proposition 112.

Here was my "not-ready-for-prime-time" reply:

I am very aware of Prop 112 / Colorado. Interestingly, another reader sent me the link to this same article earlier today -- it adds yet another wrinkle of which I was not aware.

I have purposely not mentioned this issue (Prop 112) on the blog (or if I have, I have forgotten) it's because I generally don't want to get into the back and forth of unsettled issues. I know I am inconsistent on that. I'm sure you can find many, many cases in which the issue had not been settled and I continued to blog about it.

As an example, before the DAPL was decided, I wrote about it often but that only because for the Bakken it was impossible to ignore, and the blog is focused on the Bakken. Having said that, I tried very hard to not get into the day in / day out opinion pieces on the merits of the DAPL. I could have spent 24/7 on the DAPL. I'm sure readers will remember it differently than how I remember it. 

I almost never blogged about the activity by the protestors and I have almost no blogs on the court trials of those arrested.

But for me, the Colorado / Prop 112 issue seemed so "peculiar" to Colorado with little direct impact on the Bakken so I chose to ignore it and planned to report on it when the vote comes in.

What I will now add (not in the original e-mail):

Perhaps the real reason I am not posting this story (Proposition 112 / Colorado): if passed, this measure will be so incredibly harmful to the state that I don't even want to think about it. 

One wonders how many oil companies now headquartered in Denver or who have offices in Denver will simply pack up and leave if the measure passes. I think they all will. I saw it happen in Williston after the last boom in the 1980s. When the bust came in late 1980s, or whenever it was, the oil companies simply left ... literally overnight. All of them -- except perhaps Hess (it remained in the oil capital of North Dakota: Tioga).

Wow, think of the repercussions all the way, up and down the entire oil and gas industry. Even the airline industry servicing Denver would be cut back significantly. When I think of the "oil capitals" in the United States, there are not many: Houston, Ft Worth, Dallas, .... Denver? Wow, can you imagine Denver coming off that list?

When one starts thinking about the economic effects on Colorado if this measure passes, it's almost unfathomable. 

Again, this whole post is "not ready for prime time," but I felt obligated to at least respond to readers who were wondering how I could be missing, perhaps, the biggest energy story in the 2018 election, even if the response is pretty lame.