The candidates vying to become the first representative of Colorado’s new, highly competitive 8th Congressional District raced through a variety of hot-button issues in their first and only scheduled debate on Thursday.
State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Republican and a longtime fixture in Weld County politics, used the debate, hosted by 9News, to repeat a series of false claims about the oil and gas industry and the impacts of a 2019 law sponsored by her Democratic opponent, state Rep. Yadira Caraveo.
Kirkmeyer called Senate Bill 19-181, a package of health, safety and environmental reforms passed by Democrats in the General Assembly, a “de facto ban on oil and gas.”
“We went from 5,100 permits approved in 2018 down to about, I think, 22 — 22 permits this year, something approximately in that area,” she claimed.
The true number is nearly 40 times higher than what Kirkmeyer claimed. A total of 842 permits to drill have been approved by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in 2022, according to agency data. They’re among the 1,314 active drilling permits held by Colorado oil and gas producers as of Oct. 8.
Kirkmeyer’s campaign did not respond to questions about the basis for her statements. She made a similar false claim in March, asserting that only four permits had been issued at that point in the year. The true figure was 125, COGCC data shows.
Colorado’s oil production levels have dipped slightly from their 2019 peak but remain near historic highs. Producers...
Vadodara/Surat. A special CBI court has convicted four individuals in a 23-year-old fire insurance fraud case in Gujarat and sentenced each of them to three years of rigorous imprisonment. The cou...