Since the passage of Senate Bill 19-181 in 2019, Colorado has been turning the screws on oil and gas development with the nation’s strictest industry regulations.

Apparently for some, that isn’t enough.

The activist environmental group Conservation Colorado, often a proxy for the Polis administration on climate issues, wants to overhaul the system with four ballot measures on energy production.

The ballot measures aren’t about regulating energy development; they’re about fundamentally transforming the legal framework to put the chill on development. 

Who can file claims for damages — however far-fetched — against energy companies, and what qualifies as “harm,” would be expanded under the measures. It’s an invitation to litigation. And plaintiffs no longer would have to prove negligence or wrongdoing.

That single, systemic change will take regulators out of the driver’s seat and hand the courts the wheel — bypassing the existing regulatory system set up by the legislature.

This “strict liability” system isn’t about evaluating compliance with regulations. Even if an operator is playing by all the environmental and emissions rules — dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” — they still can get sued. If a company simply produces oil or gas, it’s at risk.

Energy producers make decisions that are five or 10 years out. No business can make long-term decisions — let alone operate day to day, or finance and insure their projects — in such an unstable and high-risk legal environment? Who would invest in the industry in Colorado?

Colorado is the nation’s No. 4 producer of oil and ranks No. 6 in natural gas. That translates to thousands of jobs and billions of dollars injected into our state’s economy. 

The Conservation Colorado initiatives would sacrifice that productivity. Rural communities would be hit hardest by job losses and massive tax revenue shortfalls for schools, roads and local governments. 

All so extremists can strangle Colorado’s oil and gas development — which appears to be the goal. To fully achieve the unrealistic vision of a net-zero emissions society, you have to eliminate natural gas production.

Yet slashing supply here in Colorado simply shifts production elsewhere, leaving families and businesses alike — already struggling to pay surging energy bills — to face even higher costs and more volatile global prices as we turn to other states or countries.

Turning to outside energy sources will also put an already vulnerable electrical grid at greater risk, triggering more power shutoffs during peak demand.

The irony? Other states, and certainly other countries, often lack the robust regulations Colorado has — pushing production to places with weaker standards and likely increasing emissions, undermining the very climate-centered goals they claim to espouse.

Colorado’s oil and gas industry leads the nation in emissions reductions and water recycling and conservation technologies, driven by both market incentives and regulatory mandates.

Strict liability undermines that progress.

The advocacy group Advance Colorado is working on an initiative to let voters safeguard their right to natural gas in the state constitution, ensuring consumers’ right to buy and suppliers’ right to sell natural gas.

Conservation Colorado claims their initiatives are a response to Advance Colorado’s ballot drive. That reads less like a justification and more like an excuse for putting forward the kind of legal regime energy extremists have desired for years. It’s the first step. 

If any of their measures make November’s ballot, Colorado voters should take note of what actually could be undone: one of the nation’s toughest regulatory structures, built over decades, replaced with constant litigation.