Udall and Bennet

Rep. Cory Gardner

U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado, is the lone holdout in the state’s bipartisan push.

Rep. Lamborn

“My preference is to help industry grow by reducing federal regulations and mandates as opposed to carving out special interests in the tax code,” Lamborn wrote in an email to the Colorado Independent on Tuesday.

Lamborn, who is the chairman of the Natural Resources subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, recently supported H.R. 2173, the Advancing Offshore Wind Production Act, which would slash government red tape for the wind industry in seeking permits on federal lands. He also recently introduced a plan to open about 2 million acres of public lands in Utah, Wyoming and western Colorado to oil shale drilling, which environmentalists strongly oppose. The U.S. Department of Interior has different ideas and is trying to rein in oil shale leasing in the American West.

Polls show, however, that Colorado residents prefer renewable energy over fossil fuels.

Renewable energy experts say the wind production tax credit is key for Colorado.

“Manufacturing jobs are critical in America’s economic recovery,” Tim Heaton and Lee Boughey, chairs of the Colorado Energy Coalition, said in a joint statment. “The expiration of the Production Tax Credit would have a devastating impact on Colorado, affecting not only jobs and investment at our large wind manufacturers, but the many supply chain manufacturers that serve the wind industry. To provide the certainty that wind-energy companies need to create more jobs and investment in Colorado, the Colorado Energy Coalition endorses a three- to five-year extension of the PTC.”

The legislation, which President George H.W. Bush first signed into law in 1992, gives owners of wind energy farms a 2.2 cents-per-kilowatt credit on their U.S. income taxes annually for the first decade of the wind farm’s existence. It has been extended many times and is set to expire at the end of the year.

Colorado generates the third highest percentage of power from wind of any state in the nation and is home to several major wind energy developers and wind turbine manufacturing facilities.

Estimates show that wind energy employs upwards of 6,000 workers statewide.

The BLM’s proposal is a thorough overhaul of the Bush-era leasing inventory: it slashes shale from 1.9 million acres to 462,000 and sands from 431,000 acres to 91,000.

Oil shale is found in northwestern Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah and it contains an organic precursor to oil called kerogen. Despite decades of attempts, oil shale has never proven commercially viable. Squeezing fuel from the rock requires copious quantities of water and heating the shale underground to something above 700 degrees over a period of several years. Everything that must go into oil shale production is considered far more environmentally harmful than the production of conventional oil.

“While I have long felt there is potential for oil shale development, it is critical that a number of unanswered questions be resolved before commercial-scale leasing takes place,” Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colorado, said in a prepared statement. “Fully understanding the demands of oil shale development on Colorado’s water and local communities is essential to ensuring responsible development.”

Last year, the BLM announced it would reconsider the Bush-era land leasing plan as part of a settlement of a lawsuit by environmental groups in 2009 that challenged the 2008 action.

“For the sportsmen, farmers, ranchers and communities on the Western Slope that depend on clean air and clean water, making sure development is done right the first time is vital to their way of life,” said Udall, noting that the BLM will be accepting public comment on its plan for the next 90 days.

Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colorado, issued a statement reminding residents of “Black Sunday,” May 2, 1982, when Exxon’s massive Colony oil shale project went bust on the state’s Western Slope.

Udall and Bennet

Rep. Lamborn

“Oil shale is one of the most promising new sources of American-made energy and the United States is fortunate to have an abundance of oil shale resources, including in Colorado,” Lamborn said.

Environmentalists and others immediately panned Lamborn’s bill.

“We already face a water shortage in the West that threatens farmers and ranchers,” said Bill Midcap of the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union. “We simply cannot gamble away our water on oil shale speculation at the risk of losing our farming and ranching economy that we depend upon for our food and fiber. … We should use existing research and development projects to determine how much water will be needed before we consider commercial leasing of oil shale.”

Extracting fuel from oil shale can require anywhere between three and five barrels of water for every barrel of oil — one of the many reasons why it is more costly than producing conventional crude oil. Experts say commercial oil shale production is potentially a decade away, if it ever happens at all. Yet H.R. 3408, the “Pioneers Act,” would revive a 2008 plan by the Bureau of Land Management to open about 2 million acres of public lands in Utah, Wyoming and western Colorado to oil shale drilling.

“We already face a water shortage in the West that threatens farmers and ranchers,” said Bill Midcap of the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union. “We simply cannot gamble away our water on oil shale speculation at the risk of losing our farming and ranching economy that we depend upon for our food and fiber. A farm economy that is crucial for our State and that is helping our State out of the recession. We should use existing research and development projects to determine how much water will be needed before we consider commercial leasing of oil shale.”

Conservation groups challenged the plan on grounds that the analysis of impacts and the process were flawed and a new proposal re-evaluating the plan is due out soon. Lamborn’s bill (pdf) would mandate commercial leasing on 125,000 acres of public lands by 2016 even though the technology isn’t in place.

“Lamborn’s approach to oil shale is ‘Ready or not here it comes,’ and we are not ready,’’ the National Wildlife Federation’s Kate Zimmerman said. “There are still very important questions to be answered about the impacts of extracting oil shale on Colorado communities, on water quantity and quality and on fish and wildlife. Let’s wait for the results of the existing research into oil shale technology that is already taking place on public lands in Colorado and Utah before we give away more public resources.”

Oil shale was behind the huge western Colorado bust of the 1980s, when Exxon shut down a massive project that threw communities and families into economic and social turmoil. Nonetheless House Speaker John Boehner recently pointed to new oil shale legislation as a way to pay for transportation projects in the next five years — a check that may be hard to cash.

“Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee botched Rep. Lamborn’s oil shale legislation hearing, which showed just how ridiculous the bill is,” said Matt Garrington, co-director of the Checks and Balances Project. “In two hours, the committee majority voted down guaranteeing oil shale technology to be American-made, ensuring that oil shale extraction won’t harm water supplies for municipalities and agriculture, and requiring commercial oil shale to be a proven revenue generator before handing over 2 million acres of public land for speculation. House Republicans did manage to preserve taxpayer handouts for oil companies by giving away oil shale at bargain-basement rates, undermining Speaker Boehner’s goal of raising transportation funds.”

The Lamborn bill would set royalty rates for oil shale starting at 5 percent for five years – compared to about 12.5 percent for extracted offshore oil and gas – and gradually raise the rate over several years. If they were ever paid, Garrington added, the lower royalties would mean less revenue for local governments, which would then shoulder the burden of costs associated with energy development such as new schools, hospitals, emergency services, roads, and other utilities.

The Pioneers Act is one of three bills concerning domestic energy that the committee approved. The GOP also voted to jump start offshore oil production and open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. Republicans plan to attach the bills to a $260 billion transportation package.

“Instead of legislating seriously,” said David Goldston, director of government affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council, what the Republicans have done is put out “an inventory of all the worst ideas they’ve had for the last two decades.”

Lamborn’s bill still must pass the House and if it does, like the other measures the House Committee on Natural Resources passed Wednesday, it will face opposition in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

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“I’m hopeful that with some of the [research and development] things that are going on, there are going to be less environmental impacts and that we can provide oil to our nation that’s from our country,” Garfield County Commissioner Tom Jankovsky said, according to the Associated Press.

Shell in-situ oil shale research project in Colorado's Rio Blanco County (USGS photo).

Jankovsky told the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel that the BLM will trim at least 270,000 acres of federal land from the 2 million acres opened up for potential leasing during the waning days of the Bush administration. Environmental groups challenged the so-called “midnight regulations,” which also set royalty rates if oil shale ever becomes commercially viable.

Republican Colorado Reps. Scott Tipton and Doug Lamborn want to scrap the Obama administration’s fresh look altogether, even though it was the product of a settlement with conservation groups worried about impacts to water and fragile Western Slope landscapes. Lamborn recently introduced legislation to compel the Interior Department to implement the Bush rules.

Jankovsky said the BLM proposal cuts 421 square miles from the proposed 3,125 square miles set aside in 2008, with the biggest cut coming in the form of the 182-square-mile Adobe Town area in Wyoming

There are an estimated 800 billion gallons of recoverable oil in the Green River Formation of northwestern Colorado, southwestern Wyoming and eastern Utah, but companies like ExxonMobil and Shell have been working for decades to figure out how to extract crude oil from the organic kerogen trapped in the rocks and sand. The kerogen must be super-hearted either in the ground (“in situ”) or after surface mining of the rocks.

Garfield County was the epicenter of an oil shale boom in the late 1970s and early 1980s that never resulted in commercial production and precipitated a catastrophic bust that destroyed the economies of Western Slope towns such as Rifle, Parachute and Battlement Mesa.

http://coloradoindependent.com/64303/ghosts-of-black-sunday-hover-over-blms-cautious-oil-shale-move

Garfield County Commissioner John Martin was a police officer in the 1980s who in 2008 told the Colorado Independent he has no desire the repeat the hard lessons learned from the “Black Sunday” bust of 1982.

“I crushed a lot of families in that I served them the papers they were dreading to get,” Martin said at the time. “I shut down businesses and boarded them up because they couldn’t pay their taxes or their mortgages, and I remember every one of their faces and I remember the heartache. You think I want that to happen with this energy boom? The answer is no, I definitely don’t.”

The natural gas boom Martin was referring to in 2008 did subside with the global recession and steep decline in gas prices. But gas drilling activity is picking up again across the state, although water remains a huge concern because of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

Martin acknowledges water and conventional power consumption remain significant hurdles for the oil shale industry as well, which even proponents admit is perhaps “decades away” from full commercial production, but in the past he’s said every method must be explored to unlock the kerogen, including using nuclear power.

The group was made up of sportsmen, energy experts, farmers and former politicians. They met with members of Congress and Obama administration officials to push for tougher regulations as the Interior Department reviews Bush-era rules for leasing public lands and collecting royalties.

Shell in-situ oil shale research project in Colorado's Rio Blanco County (USGS photo).

“Oil shale research should be more than a science project regarding technology,” said fly-in participant Jim Spehar, a former Grand Junction mayor. “Someone needs to be figuring out how communities in northwest Colorado can handle up to six times their current population, as forecast in the most recent impacts analysis for local governments, and who’s going to pay the costs of dealing with that kind of growth.”

Oil shale, not to be confused with shale oil, is most prevalent in the Green River Formation of northwestern Colorado, southwestern Wyoming and eastern Utah. Extracting it involves heating up rocks to pump out the organic kerogen and then converting it into commercial oil. Exxon spent millions in the late 1970s trying to ramp up commercial production on Colorado’s Western Slope, but the Colony Oil Shale Project went bust in 1982.

Shell Oil is widely believed to be the farthest along in terms of current work on its RD&D (Research, Development and Demonstration) leases, but even Shell officials admit commercial production is years, if not decades, away.

“We aim to advance the technology systematically to the point at which an application could be made to convert the 160-acre RD&D tracts to commercial leases,” the company’s website states. “A commercial decision would be middle of the next decade and possibly later depending on the sequence and outcome of research activities.”

Shell officials have confirmed that research at its Mahogany Project in Rio Blanco County shows it will take at least three barrels of water for every barrel of oil produced from oil shale. Critics say such research should be completed and the process proven commercially viable before the federal government sets royalty rates and leasing parameters.

But Shell official Dan Whitney, during a congressional oversight field hearing conducted by Colorado Republican Reps. Scott Tipton and Doug Lamborn in Grand Junction this summer, called the Obama administration review of Bush-era rules “a waste of taxpayer money” that is hindering oil shale development.

Shell has spent an estimated $200 million so far on its Mahogany Project without ever recouping any of that investment with commercial sales of oil. Asked about its “middle of the next decade” statement on its website, a spokeswoman had this to say:

“The exact timing and size of a commercial oil shale operation is dependent upon many factors, including the economic and regulatory environment, project economics and consultations with key stakeholders,” said Shell’s Kelly op de Weegh.

“We are deliberately taking a cautious approach to oil shale technology development. Our research to date has demonstrated that our In-Situ Conversion Process works technically on a small scale. What remains is to prove that it can work commercially.”

Members of Colorado’s conservation community who participated in this week’s fly-in say the state’s outdoor-recreation and tourism-based economy should not be sacrificed for the promise of jobs that still may be decades away.

“The outdoor industry sustains thousands of jobs that depend on outdoor recreation in Colorado and throughout the West,” said Suzanne O’Neill, executive director of the Colorado Wildlife Federation. “With all of the questions surrounding oil shale’s financial viability, it would be irresponsible to trade any of those jobs for promised, but never delivered, employment from oil shale.”

For decades, Royal Dutch Shell – Europe’s largest energy company – has been known in Colorado as the king of oil shale research, spending an estimated $200 million on an experimental and controversial extraction process that has yet to be proven commercially viable.

But Shell and its American subsidiaries have increasingly been moving into natural gas drilling in the United States, including a well permit pulled in southern Colorado that has touched off a firestorm of debate over state versus local control of drilling operations and just how much public input should be allowed.

The company also acquired natural gas leases in northwestern Colorado when it purchased Pennsylvania-based East Resources for $4.7 billion last year – a move Shell CEO Peter Voser said fit with company plans to “grow and upgrade” its shale gas holdings in North America. Because while oil shale remains years if not decades away from viability, shale gas is quite lucrative right now.

“We do have additional leasehold in northwest Colorado – Moffat and Routt counties, specifically,” Shell’s Kelly op de Weegh told the Colorado Independent. “We’re still in an early phase of development and have not yet begun drilling operations. We are currently upgrading the existing field facilities to Shell’s stringent safety and operational standards.”

Those standards are precisely what citizen advocates in Colorado’s Huerfano County (CHC) are concerned about. A group called Citizens for Huerfano County filed a lawsuit in July seeking to vacate a state permit issued to Shell Western Exploration and Production to drill and hydraulically fracture a natural gas well in the area.

The group argues both the county commissioners and the state did not properly inform them of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) permit or allow public input.

“CHC members are infuriated that neither the COGCC nor the county commissioners think they have any obligation to inform the public or to allow them any meaningful role in the permitting process — even though it is the residents of Huerfano County who will be dealing with well impacts,” CHC attorney Julie Kreutzer said in a press release.

Shell’s op de Weegh did not directly address the litigation in southern Colorado, but did acknowledge the company’s operations there.

“We do have leasehold in Huerfano County for future natural gas operations,” op de Weegh said. “Much like our project in the northwest, it is also in a very early stage. We are not currently drilling in Huerfano County.”

The COGCC, which has ultimate regulatory authority over oil and gas drilling in Colorado, informed both Huerfano County and CHC members that, “based upon this review, we determined that the permitted well and location will not result in significant adverse impacts to public health, safety, or welfare or the environment.”

But in July the COGCC admitted that it “regrettably” failed to properly inform county officials (pdf) of Shell’s application or the state review in May. COGCC in July suspended Shell’s permit for 20 days to allow the county to comment, but the county commissioners opted not to do so, making the permit once again valid in August.

The dispute again raises the thorny issue of local control over oil and gas drilling, which typically is almost exclusively under the purview of state regulatory officials. However, Garfield County in the past has looked into exercising county 1041 powers, which have previously been reserved for regulating large infrastructure projects such as utility lines or water storage or diversion facilities.

CHC recently hosted a talk by Josh Joswick, a former three-term La Plata County commissioner who’s now the oil and gas issues organizer with San Juan Citizens Alliance in southwestern Colorado.

Joswick previously told the Colorado Independent that La Plata County in the early 1990s also explored using 1041 powers to locally regulate oil and gas drilling but instead opted to write and approve its own set of oil and gas regulations. Those rules were challenged by the state and the industry but ultimately upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court.

Also in heavily drilled Garfield County, citizen groups have asked the county to use land-use powers to increase setbacks so that gas rigs can’t be erected too close to homes, schools and other public buildings. Such a move could ultimately land in court if state officials don’t feel greater setbacks are necessary.

Leslie Robinson, a citizen activist in Garfield County who for years has followed the local-versus-state control and public input issue, says the entire system is badly broken.

“It’s a travesty that citizens have to sue to get equal representation before a government entity like the COGCC — isn’t there something like the Declaration of Independence that gives citizens equal rights?” Robinson said. “However, when it comes to oil-and-gas issues and the state of Colorado, citizens are less than second-class because we get no voice at all at these hearings and there is no recourse.”

CHC also is protesting a Nov. 10 U.S. Bureau of Land Management lease sale in Denver, which would offer up 8,000 acres of federal lands in Huerfano County for oil and gas drilling.

Follow David O. Williams on Twitter. ]]> http://coloradoindependent.com/101336/shells-natural-gas-play-in-colorado-raises-issues-of-local-versus-state-input-control/feed 7 http://coloradoindependent.com/96741/mckibbens-largest-act-of-climate-change-protest-on-xl-pipeline-to-roll-through-colorado http://coloradoindependent.com/96741/mckibbens-largest-act-of-climate-change-protest-on-xl-pipeline-to-roll-through-colorado#comments Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:49:39 +0000 David O. Williams http://coloradoindependent.com/?p=96741 A caravan that environmentalist and renowned climate-change writer Bill McKibben calls the “largest collective act of civil disobedience in the history of the climate movement” will roll through Boulder and Denver next week to protest the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast of Texas.]]>

A caravan that environmentalist and renowned climate-change writer Bill McKibben calls the “largest collective act of civil disobedience in the history of the climate movement” will roll through Boulder and Denver next week to protest the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Designed to carry oil from the tar sands production fields of Canada to oil refineries on the Gulf Coast, the nearest the pipeline comes to Colorado is Nebraska, but activists point out that tar sands oil already comes into Commerce City by pipeline and is then refined by Suncor Energy and sold as gasoline across Colorado at nearly 270 Shell and Phillips 66 stations.

Climatologist Jim Hansen, also traveling with the cross-country No Tar Sands Caravan from Davis, Calif., to Washington, D.C. Aug. 21-26, said it’s “essentially game over for the climate” if the XL pipeline wins U.S. State Department approval and allows full exploitation of tar sands reserves in Canada. The extraction process uses huge quantities of water and conventional power and is responsible for enormous amounts of carbon dioxide and other emissions, critics say.

Activists, including actor Danny Glover, plan to travel the nation to spread the word on the folly of expanding tar sands production via the XL pipeline, which has been under increased scrutiny following an ExxonMobil pipeline spill in Montana’s Yellowstone River earlier this summer.

In a release regarding the No Tar Sands Caravan Colorado stops, the group drew parallels between tar sands production and efforts in this state to revive oil shale production on the Western Slope.

“The rising dollar value of oil has got Western slope communities bracing for a revival of destructive oil shale development,” the release reads. “Oil shale, like tar sand, requires tremendous amounts of water, habitat destruction, and deadly emissions to produce each barrel of oil.”

Not so be confused with recent shale oil plays (traditional oil and gas drilling in shale formations using hydraulic fracturing), oil shale production died in Colorado in the early 1980s before it ever even got started commercially. It involves super-hearting shale rock and sand to extract organic kerogen and then refine it into oil. Research on vast untapped reserves in the Green River Formation of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming has been under way for decades.

Proponents of oil shale production say the Obama administration has been dragging its feet on the potential fuel source while fast-tracking tar sands. And there is growing interest from some businesses and Republican politicians on the Western Slope to revive the long-dormant but still-unproven industry.

The No Tar Sands Caravan stops in Boulder Monday evening, Aug. 22, and overnights at the Masala Community House. Demonstrators then head to Denver for a 9 a.m. rally on the west steps of the State Capitol. The ultimate destination is a “sustained presence from over 2,000 citizens on the White House gates.”

One of those citizens will be recent Fairview High School [Boulder] graduate Alex Budd, who said in a release: “Tar sands development will be the final nail in the climate coffin. If we are to have any hope of preserving a world worth living in, this is a line we absolutely must not cross! Knowing what’s at stake, I will do what is necessary to defend what I love. Enough is enough.”

Hard to imagine in a year when snowpack up until recently has been more than 200 percent of normal in the Colorado River Basin and its major tributaries on the state’s Western Slope, but the long-term prognosis for the river that provides water to more than 30 million people in the Desert Southwest is not good.

A new interim report released this week by the federal government, Colorado and six other states along the river suggests that “by mid-century the average yield of the Colorado River could be reduced by 10-20 percent due to climate change. Meanwhile, the Basin States include some of the fastest growing urban and industrial areas in the United States. Increasing demands coupled with decreasing supplies will exacerbate imbalances throughout the Basin in the future.”

Sobering stats from non-hysterical sources like the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the major stakeholders along the river. The full report will be released in digestible chunks over the next year or so and is aimed at coming up with some collaborative approaches to solving inevitable conflicts among the various user groups. For instance, energy production versus agriculture versus residential development versus outdoor recreation versus wildlife and riparian habitat.

Some will no doubt say such a report is a waste of federal and state funding and that scenarios suggesting global climate change will be a factor are politically motivated. But the climate change model is one of just four possible scenarios contemplated in the report, and an ongoing drought that has depleted Lake Powell and other major reservoirs along the Colorado is factually impossible to deny.

“We are fortunate here in that the State of Colorado has recognized the importance of understanding the future water supply and demand challenges, and we have made great steps forward in identifying issues and strategies,” Jennifer Gimbel, director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB), said in a recent release.

“Studies such as the Statewide Water Supply Initiative (SWSI 2010) and the efforts of the CWCB and the Interbasin Compact Committee (IBCC) help us to explore possible solutions to meet these future challenges. The Basin Study is a model of states working together on these issues in a more holistic and comprehensive manner.”

And it is virtually impossible to talk about climate change and energy production without talking about water supplies. The debate over oil shale production, for instance, almost always begins and ends with water. How much is required to produce oil from oil shale? Where will that water come from? And is it worth it when considering the carbon dioxide produced when developing and utilizing that resource compared to other forms of energy such as natural gas, wind and solar.

Colorado voters, to some degree, seem to be increasingly capable of making the connection between climate change and water supplies, becoming one of the first states in the nation to approve a renewable energy standard in 2004. Perhaps that stems from living in a high alpine desert where water, or the lack thereof, is always at the forefront of major public policy debates.

Even conservative columnist Vince Carroll cites that voter awareness in a column in today’s Denver Post questioning U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., for joining eight other members of the House in an attempt to defund the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden.

“Colorado voters approved this state’s first renewable-energy mandate in 2004, and the expanded standard is probably as popular as ever,” Carroll writes. “Yet electricity ratepayers have to subsidize green technologies. Wouldn’t it be nice if that weren’t necessary — if renewables could compete in the marketplace without the mandates, subsidies and cost-shifting gimmickry that now prop them up? From both a political and policy standpoint, pulling the plug on research is an atrocious idea.”

Of course, some on the left have suggested it would be nice if century-old fossil fuel production companies enjoying record profits as gas prices have spiked this spring could also do without tax breaks and subsidies. But the powerful oil and gas lobby successfully squelched that line of debate in the GOP-controlled House.

Which brings the subject, inevitably, back around to water. ExxonMobil and Shell, both heavily involved in oil shale research and development on Colorado’s Western Slope, are two of the biggest holders of water rights in the troubled Colorado River Basin. Ultimately, ‘Big Oil” will have a lot to say about how the dwindling resource is consumed in the increasingly populous Desert Southwest.

A representative of an organization whose research on oil shale production has been cited for years testified before Congress Friday that “decisions made by the federal government may have a profound impact on the residents in the northwestern quarter of Colorado …”

James T. Bartis of the RAND Corporation testified on Friday (pdf) before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Power. He was asked to speak to the alternative fuel provisions in HR 909, the “Roadmap for America’s Energy Future” bill sponsored by Devin Nunes, R-Calif.

“Most of the high value resources lie within in a very small area (roughly 30 by 35 miles) within Colorado’s Piceance Basin and within a small portion of the nearby Uinta Basin within Utah,” Bartis said. “Large-scale development of oil shale will cause federal lands to be diverted from their current uses.

“In the absence environmental and economic mitigation measures unprecedented in scope and scale, such development would almost certainly have adverse ecological impacts, and would likely be accompanied by socioeconomic impacts that could be particularly severe, especially in the northwest quarter of Colorado.”

The RAND Corporation was hired by the U.S. Department of Energy to do a report on oil shale several years ago indicating it would require 10 new coal-fired power plants to produce one million barrels a day of oil on Colorado’s Western Slope. The report (pdf) also indicated at least five barrels of water would be required for every barrel of oil – and that’s if the technology to heat the organic kerogen in shale rock and sand is ever commercially perfected.

The report has been criticized by some who say it is outdated based on more recent research and development. Backers of oil shale production generally support Bush administration rulemaking that set royalty rates on federal lands and greatly expanded the areas available for leasing.

Critics say the so-called Bush “midnight rulemaking” in 2008 was premature because the technology is so unproven and full-scale commercial oil shale production will consume too much conventional power and scarce Colorado water.

Conservation groups have been saying for years that the resources pumped into oil shale production by Exxon, Shell and other corporations would be better spent on the development of renewable sources of energy. RAND’s Bartis cited a passage from HR 909, then refuted it:

“Section 141(a)(5) makes the claim that ‘Oil shale is one of the best resources available for advancing American technology and creating American jobs,’” Bartis testified. “I have no knowledge of any research that supports this claim. Oil shale has a potentially important role in advancing our energy security and furthering economic progress. I see no reason to promote oil shale as above other promising areas for advancing technology and creating jobs.”

Anyone in Colorado who remembers Black Sunday, May 2, 1982, when Exxon’s massive Colony oil shale project went bust on the state’s Western Slope knows that superheating kerogen to squeeze oil out of the shale rock and sand of the Green River Formation is not at all like the shale oil plays currently going on in North Dakota’s Bakken Formation or the Eagle Ford Shale play in south Texas.

McGraw was taking to task a report by the Checks and Balances Project that the Colorado Independent cited last week. It provided an historical overview of the false promises made by oil shale advocates since the early part of the last century. Oil shale production has never been proven commercially viable in the United States. Shale oil plays have proven quite lucrative in recent years.

Writing on globalwarming.org – which is supported in part by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (Free markets and limited government) — McGraw on Thursday offered that, “Even if you assume the amount of recoverable oil is much less than projected, referring to shale oil as a ‘science fiction’ is laughably naive, to the point of willful ignorance.” The Checks and Balances report was entitled “Oil Shale, a century-old science fiction story.”

To his credit, McGraw on Friday corrected his blog after the error was pointed out: “The phrases ‘laughably naive’ and ‘willfull ignorance’ would seem to be more appropriately directed towards my own writing in this case.”