colorado environmental coalition

What’s at stake

The Domenici-Tauzin energy bill spells disaster for America’s energy future and the farmers, ranchers, wildlife, recreationists, and rural residents of the West. Oil and gas provisions in the Domenici-Tauzin energy bill are a radical departure from the approach by Congress to managing our public lands in the West over the last 50 years.

The bill seeks to entrench oil and gas development as the dominant use of America’s western public and private “split estate” lands — at the expense of rural communities, wildlife, water quality, private property rights, recreationists, and family farms and ranches.

At the same time, the bill unnecessarily increases subsidies to the oil and gas industry — to the tune of billions of dollars — all the while shifting liability for clean-up of abandoned oil and gas fields from energy companies to taxpayers.

In the meantime, speeding up drilling in the West won’t make America energy independent.