Happy Earth Day, How About An Oil Lease?

By Joan McCarter, 4-22-08

Nothing says Earth Day like a newspaper packed with extra circulars exhorting you to honor the day by going out and buying stuff. Here’s the ultimate Earth Day sale. The BLM is pushing forward with its oil shale and tar sands development plan for more than two million acres of wild public lands in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, even though there is no commercially viable development technology and that technology could be decades away. Oh, and then there’s the small issue of the land, the air, and the water.

In 2005, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, attempting to boost the nation’s future energy supply with fossil fuels. That, in turn, opened up this 2.3 million acres of public land that contains oil shale and tar sands. It’s a grand plan, reducing our nation’s dependence on foreign oil through domestic production. But, as always, there’s a rub:

New technologies for the safe commercial exploration of oil shale are at least a decade away, according to industry experts and independent observers like the RAND Corporation. Despite the need for additional years of research, the Bush Administration’s BLM is rushing before it leaves office to complete public comment on a draft environmental impact statement that could pave the way for commercial–scale leasing. The BLM is taking this step even while it manages a research and development program on federal lands meant to better understand the significant technological obstacles posed by the commercial development of oil shale and tar sands.

The RAND Corporation study [pdf] referenced was completed in 2005. Among its conclusions, we’re at least a decade away from starting production in these fields. No company or organization currently exists that has the “management, technical, and financial wherewithal to develop oil shale resources.” No company or organization is even in a position to commit funding to an oil shale venture, because it takes at least six years for the research and development phase of even setting up a facility. It will take that long because it would be the first of its kind. Then there’s another potential decade, RAND says, “required to permit, design, construct, shake down, and confirm performance of that initial commercial operation.”

Consequently, at least 12 and possibly more years will elapse before oil shale development will reach the production growth phase. Under high growth assumptions, an oil shale production level of 1 million barrels per day is probably more than 20 years in the future, and 3 million barrels per day is probably more than 30 years into the future.

What do we potentially sacrifice on those 2.3 million acres for reducing our dependence on foreign oil 30 years from now?

Land Use and Ecological Impacts. Of all the environmental impacts of oil shale development, the most serious appears to be the extent to which land will be disturbed. Regardless of the technical approach to oil shale development, a portion of the land over the Green River Formation will need to be withdrawn from current uses, and there could be permanent topographic changes and impacts on flora and fauna. For surface retorting, extensive and permanent changes to surface topography will result from mining and spent shale disposal. In-situ retorting appears to be much less disruptive, but surface-based drilling and support operations will cause at least a decade-long displacement of all other land uses and of preexisting flora and fauna at each development site.

Air Quality. Oil shale operations will result in emissions that could impact regional air quality. Studies in the 1970s and 1980s suggested that air emissions from an industry producing a few hundred thousand barrels per day could probably be controlled to meet then existing regulations. No studies have been reported since, and no studies have considered output on the order of several million barrels per day. Meanwhile, so much has changed in terms of environmental regulations, mining and process technologies, and pollution control technologies that the earlier analyses are no longer relevant.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions. The production of petroleum products derived from oil shale will entail significantly higher emissions of carbon dioxide, compared with conventional crude oil production. If these emissions are to be controlled, oil shale production costs will increase.

Water Quality. All high-grade western oil shale resources lie in the Colorado River drainage basin. For mining and surface retorting, the major water quality issue is the leaching of salts and toxics from spent shale. A number of approaches are available for preventing surface water contamination from waste piles, but it is not clear whether these methods represent a permanent solution that will be effective after the site is closed and abandoned. For in-situ retorting, inadequate information is available on the fate, once extraction operations cease, of salts and other minerals that are commingled with oil shale....

Water Consumption. About three barrels of water are needed per barrel of shale oil produced. Water availability analyses for oil shale development were conducted in the early 1980s. These analyses indicated that the earliest constraining factors would be limitations in local water supply systems, such as reservoirs, pipelines, and ground-water development. A bigger issue is the impact of a strategic-scale oil shale industry on the greater Colorado River Basin. Demands for water are expected to continue to grow for the foreseeable future, making the earlier analyses regarding oil shale development outdated.

So what we don’t know is how much it will cost, how it will be done, how much damage will be done to air and water quality. We don’t know this because oil shale development had been deemed impractical decades ago, and the research hasn’t been done. What we do know: it will take huge amounts of water from the Colorado River Basin. Water that just isn’t there to be diverted.

So with no plan in place for how to exploit these resources, and no guarantees that a plan to do so even exists--that a company or organization would be willing to make the R&D investment necessary--and with the knowledge that potential development of the industry would cause untold environmental damage and suck up precious water, the leases are going to be sold. In the waning months of the Bush administration, no oil field shall go untapped. No roadless area undisturbed. No threatened or endangered species unmolested. No oil company crony left without a his big chunk of the federal treasury.

2009 can’t come fast enough.

Editor’s note: Joan McCarter’s weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics’ “Diary of a Mad Voter” feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.