Colbert, in a five-minute segment ridiculing hydraulic fracturing, the controversial process for extracting gas from rocks like Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale, singled out the coloring book as a way for Talisman "to counter their image problem."
Natalie Cox, a spokeswoman for Talisman Energy USA Inc., said the coloring book has been in circulation for two years, but only recently has been drawn into the polarized war over shale-gas extraction.
"I can't stress this enough: It's just a coloring book," she said.
Talisman Terry was created in 2009 by the in-house communications staff at Talisman, a Canadian company whose U.S. operations are based in the Pittsburgh suburb of Warrendale. The book was deployed as part of a community outreach campaign in the area where Talisman operates along the Pennsylvania-New York border.
"At the time, nobody had heard of the Marcellus Shale," she said. "It was something you give away at a county fair."
Last year some anti-drilling activists found the coloring book - it's downloadable on Talisman's web site - and mocked it online as an effort to favorably shape young minds on drilling.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette discovered it last month, followed soon by Washington news outlets and U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), who derided it Friday in a Congressional statement.
The coloring book contains some useful information that may come as news to some big-city media outlets. "Some wells may produce for a short period of time, while others may produce gas for many years," Terry explains in one panel.
Terry makes no attempt to explain hydraulic fracturing, which involves the injection of water, sand and chemicals into rock to release gas. "During the drilling process, you may see a lot of big equipment, including a drill rig, large trucks and tanks of water," the dinosaur says.
