Tag: water consumption

Dr. Jeremy Boak, a leading expert on oil shale technology at the Colorado School of Mines, says the Obama administration is dragging its feet on oil shale production in the United States much the way the Bush administration stalled on climate change policy. “It’s curious to hear the same sort of arguments being made by this administration that were made by the Bush administration for not doing anything on climate change,” Boak told the Colorado Independent. “We’ve got to have all the answers before we can move.”

With crude oil prices creeping back toward $100 a barrel and unrest racking the Middle East from Egypt – where 3 million barrels of mostly U.S.-bound oil passes through the Suez Canal each day – to Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, it’s not surprising there’s renewed interest in Colorado’s vast oil shale reserves.

In the wake of a recent report showing Colorado will face severe water shortages by 2050, a Boulder-based conservation group has released a study comparing the water consumption of conventional coal-fired power plants to cleaner burning forms of fuel. Western Resource Advocates’ (WRA) new report, “Every Drop Counts: Valuing the Water Used to Generate Electricity,” found that in Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, power plants consume an estimated 395,000 acre feet of water a year.

No matter how much water it takes to cool a proposed nuclear power plant near Green River, Utah – the topic of thorny debate...