Wyoming’s top regulator of oil and gas development has resigned after he remarked at a conference that greed and desire for compensation motivate people who assert that hydraulic fracturing has contaminated their groundwater.

Gov. Matt Mead on Thursday announced the resignation of Tom Doll, supervisor of the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

Doll’s comments June 5 at a meeting of state oil and gas regulators in Vancouver, British Columbia, had to do with residents near Pavillion in central Wyoming.

“I really believe greed is driving a lot of this” and people around Pavillion are “just looking to be compensated,” the energy news publication EnergyWire quoted Doll as saying. MORE …