CO oil industry shill starring in pro-fracking ad represents herself as "organic farmer" [View all]

[brentspeak]

Last edited Mon Jan 5, 2015, 01:29 AM - Edit history (7)

Part of what Elbert County (Colorado) resident Michelle Smith says is true: she does, in fact, own and live on an organic farm in Elbert County:

http://www.boulderweekly.com/article-13744-who%C3%A2%C2%80%C2%99s-getting-whose-goat.html

“We have never used pesticides, chemicals, those kinds of things — we don’t use any ‘weed and seed,’” Smith told Boulder Weekly in a phone interview. “I’m a huge gardener also, and those types of things have always been environmentally conscious [choices for us]. Two years ago we made the decision to begin upgrading as much feed as possible to organic for the livestock.”

Smith is also an enthusiastic supporter of fracking, and in a pro-fracking ad aired throughout Colorado, entitled "Farmer Michelle", she explains, among friendly scenes of wheat fields and grazing farm animals, just why she supports the practice:

“Mineral rights make all the difference to our small organic based farm,” Smith says in the advertisement, which is sponsored by Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development. CRED was formed by oil industry giants Anadarko Petroleum Corporation and Nobel Energy.

The ad continues, “Like many Colorado farm-to-table businesses, if we can’t offset operating costs with our minerals, then we’re out of business,” Smith narrates over sun-dappled shots of her Elbert County farm, a smattering of goats ambling out of their pens, a medium shot of hands pulling forward a tray of sprouted barley. “Organic operations are expensive. People like us rely on those payments for their family’s healthcare or their kids’ education. An attack on fracking is essentially an attack on landowners like us. Those who would ban fracking ignore our rights, and that just gets my goat.”

But organic farming is not her actual, full-time profession.

You see, in addition to being "an organic farmer", Smith also happens to be a land investor in fracking-targeted mineral estates, owning the mineral rights to her 100-acre Elbert County land -- and, crucially, also to land she owns in an undisclosed 80-acre portion of Garfield County, CO, where she does not live.

More to the point, she works for the oil and gas industry.

Smith is a 30-year veteran of the oil and gas industry. She’s been with oil and gas investment business Quiat Companies since 1992 as a land manager, focusing on acquisitions, divestitures and coordination of joint drilling ventures. She’s the president of the National Association of Royalty Owners’ Rockies chapter, a board member of the energy-promotion group Vital Colorado and a member of the American Association of Petroleum Landmen.

And as for the property in Garfield County:

It was the intention of Boulder Weekly to obtain the exact location of the Smiths’ mineral interest in Garfield County in order to directly speak to the surface owners and residents who are actually being impacted by oil and gas operations in the area, but Smith declined to reveal her minerals location saying she’d “rather not disclose that.”

It took the alternative Boulder Weekly to do the actual reporting on Smith's background because the Denver Post was too lazy to do anything other than to provide a platform for her and her organization.