Gov. John Hickenlooper told a crowd of energy industry and civic leaders on Wednesday that he doesn’t expect restrictions on hydraulic fracturing and drilling to reach the ballot next year. The former geologist contended that enthusiasm for anti-fracking measures has ebbed since a year ago, when ballot measures were at the center of hotly contested political fights.

“There will be proposals,” he said, “but I don’t think there’ll be something funded to a significant extent. I don’t expect there to be something that’ll get on the ballot.”

Fracking, Hickenlooper said, has been “a lightning rod” that has drawn concern, but it’s up to the industry and its supporters to dispel myths about the process, he said. “We’re going to begin to see kids in school and people all over the state having a much more balanced approach,” he added, when the facts are better understood.

The Democrat joined U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, a Republican, for an early morning discussion about the future of the energy industry in Colorado.

“You’d be surprised how little we disagree,” Hickenlooper said later, and he was right, at least on the topics up for discussion at the breakfast.

The forum was sponsored by Vital for Colorado, an organization formed to promote “a pro-business, pro-energy voice” in the state.“The broader community of voices aren’t going to sit back and watch a key player and so many Coloradans be vilified,” said Peter Moore, the organization’s chairman. The group counts some 35,000 members dedicated to supporting “responsible” energy development in the state.

“Responsible energy development is not a partisan issue and should never be a partisan issue,” said Dan Haley, the new president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. He praised Hickenlooper and Gardner for their “unwavering support for the oil and gas industry.”

Last summer, Hickenlooper brokered a deal to encourage U.S. Rep. Jared Polis to withdraw a pair of anti-fracking ballot measures in exchange for establishing a panel tasked with solving disagreements over how much control local communities should have over oil and gas development. The group produced a handful of recommendations, although many local-control advocates and anti-fracking activists dismissed the outcome as inconsequential.

But Hickenlooper argued that he doesn’t perceive “the same energy or sense of frustration” as was evident a year ago, adding that his sense is that residents “would say we’re making progress.”

The head of one group planning to run a ballot measure next year disagreed, telling The Colorado Statesman that Hickenlooper was over-confident and holds “a severely clouded and disconnected view of Colorado’s communities.”

Colorado Community Rights Network’s Cliff Willmeng said the group is going to be proceeding with plans to introduce an initiative that “codifies our fundamental rights against corporate power.”

In what was a common refrain at the breakfast, Haley noted that the United States is the No. 1 oil and gas producer in the world, in large part due to fracking and horizontal drilling technologies. “And Colorado is helping lead the way,” he beamed.

Gardner told the crowd he likes to remind folks that he grew up in Yuma, a two-stoplight town, but that thanks to natural gas development on the Eastern Plains, now it’s a three stoplight town.

“This economy has created tens of thousands of jobs across Colorado and resulted in billions of dollars of economic activity,” he added.Because of advanced extraction technologies, the evolving global energy landscape — “Israel is just steps away from providing energy to Egypt and Jordan,” Gardner noted — will soon have a noticeable, widespread impact on international relations of all sorts.

“It really does change the equation in terms of global economic opportunity, in terms of global security issues,” Gardner said. “These are game-changing decisions, when we can starve the regimes of Russia and others because of energy production in Colorado.”

Weld County Commissioner Barbara Kirkmeyer — a full 80 percent of the state’s oil and gas production is within her county’s boundaries — said after the forum that she was happy with what she heard and was confident that Vital for Colorado would get its message across.

“We’ve got a strong business community standing behind us and working with us to go out and help educate and inform all of the people in Colorado, not just about the importance of the energy industry, but the importance of jobs to people individually,” she said. “Talk about the facts with regard to drilling and hydraulic fracturing in the state of Colorado.”

“We’ve made it work in Weld County,” she said. “We’ve worked to diligently ensure that surface owners and sub-surface owners are working together to coexist, and we don’t want state government to get in the middle of that.”

Asked by an audience member to handicap the 2016 presidential race, Gardner joked about the number of Republicans — particularly Senate colleagues — in the running.

“Sometimes I go to work in the Senate and look around to see who’s not running for president,” he said, adding that the crowded contest is just beginning so it’s too early to guess how things might turn out. “I think it’s good we have this many voices. I’m excited we have this debate,” he said.

As things stand, Gardner pegged Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as the three leaders in the field, though those spots could be up for grabs. “Like we saw two years ago,” he said, “everybody’s going to have their week or month in the sun.”

Hickenlooper picked a wild card on the Republican side, suggesting that there might be “some interesting voices” to emerge above the din.“I think (South Carolina Sen.) Lindsey Graham is going to come along and change the discussion,” he said, pointing to the probable Republican candidate’s views on national security.

As for the Democrats, Hickenlooper didn’t stray from the conventional wisdom.

“As long as Hillary Clinton wants it, which she clearly does, I think she’ll be the Democratic candidate,” he said.

— ernest@coloradostatesman.com