Lively Exchange at BLM Oil Shale Meeting in Rifle
A BLM public meeting on oil shale drew about 100 people in Rifle yesterday, as the agency takes a fresh look fresh look at an oil shale plan released in the closing days of the Bush Administration.
Posted by Staff
Those in attendance voiced their concerned about rising gasoline prices, and air and water quality as the discussion focused on the attempt to unlock millions of barrels of oil from rocks in large sections of Colorado’s Western Slope.
The plan released by the Bush Administation made nearly 2 million acres of public land potentially available for commercial oil shale development in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado, and about 431,000 acres available for tar sands leasing and development.
The proposal prompted multiple lawsuits on behalf of environmental groups, and was criticized by elected officials, including former Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, now head of the Interior Department, which would be responsible for overseeing any oil shale development.
More meetings on the controversial plan are scheduled for Denver today and in Cheyenne on Thursday.
Oil shale supporters say the Rockies’ vast resources could help cut the country’s reliance on foreign oil.
Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado’s 4th Congressional District is a big backer of stepping up domestic oil and gas production, including oil shale, on the state’s Western Slope.
“It is all well and good to propose measures that may pay off decades in the future, such as alternative energy research and higher CAFÉ standards for vehicles,” Lamborn states on his website. “The most urgent and immediate solution though is to ramp up domestic production of oil and gas right now.”
All of the major companies are doing oil shale because they think it’s an interesting and high-potential area, but they’re not in a hurry to make it productive,” said Jeremy Boak, director of the Center for Oil Shale Technology and Research (COSTAR) at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden.
But critics say any oil shale development would require enormous amounts of water, likely draw it away from agricultural and urban needs. In addition, the sector would “perpetuate a negative feedback of dirty technology,” said Melanie Finan, quoted in the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent.
Filed Under: ARCHIVES • Western Slope
Tags: Bureau of Land Management • Ken Salazar • oil shale
Oil/Gas Industry: Trust us! We care, we really do. The rest of the us: No! 
Thanks for the info Fred! 
I think its a 10% mandate not 5%. 
To see this exciting change as "scary" seems incredibly short-sited to me. Between the increasing power demands caused by ...
Thanks for highlighting all the great work the Northern Colorado Chapter of CRES is doing. One small but important correction--the ...
Comment by Bob Hall on 23 May 2012:
May 22, 2012
Some insigts follow on what things might look like going forward. Would be interested in knowing if this stikes a cord…or is really off-base, and if the latter is so, in what regard.
The Piceance Basin in northwest Colorado is the site of 1000 billion (1012) barrels of “almost” oil, referred to as oil shale. Clearly, this source can have a major impact on establishing a domestic source of energy for the nation. To transform the buried “almost” oil into “conventional” oil requires the application of heat. An In-situ Conversion Process (ICP) is being developed and relies on electric heaters inserted down drilled holes to the depth of the targeted layer of shale. These heaters gradually heat the oil shale rock formation over several years to a temperature between 340 and 370 degrees centigrade. In this process about three barrels of water are required to generate one barrel of “conventional” oil. This water requirement places a real constraint on the rate at which these 1000 billion gallons of oil can be extracted from the Piceance Basin site.
The Upper Basin of the Colorado River Compact, which encompasses the Piceance Basin, has 2.4 x 1012 gallons per year (or 5.8 x 1010 barrels/year) apportioned to it. If 5% of that is allocated to extract oil from the Piceance Basin site, then those 2.9 x 109 barrels per year of water could be used to produce the equivalent of approximately 1 billion barrels of crude oil per year, or about 15% of the nation’s present annual consumption of oil.
Based on information provided in the RAND Report “Oil Shale Development in the United States – Prospects and Policy Issues” (MG-414-NETL, 2005), it is possible to infer what the facility producing one billion barrels of oil per year for thirty years would look like. The total area to be mined over the thirty years would be 30,000 acres (47 square miles). Based on projected energy needs to run the facility, a minimum of 15,000 additional acres will be needed to locate the electric power generators.
30 GW of electric power generator capacity will be required to heat up the rock formation. There are several power generation options. First, nine Palo Verde-sized nuclear plants could be employed. The Palo Verde nuclear plant in Tonopah, AZ is the nation’s largest and is comprised of three 1.1 GW nuclear reactors. Alternatively, thirty 1- GW coal-fired power stations could be utilized. To feed fuel to these power stations will require the arrival by rail of a 100 train-car load of coal every two hours. Finally, and perhaps most sensibly, the natural gas that is produced along with the oil in the ICP could be captured and employed in 75, 400-MW gas turbines to generate the required electricity.
Beyond the physical plant described above, which by its design will significantly increase the carbon footprint per unit of net energy produced, it is presumed that any water and air quality, wild-life habitat and socioeconomic issues will be worked out with the potential positive result that this 1 billion barrel per year oil production capability could be part of the nation’s desire/need to become energy independent.