From: Senator Orrin Hatch
U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) today blasted an announcement by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to drastically limit research, demonstration and development of oil shale and tar sands in the West, including areas in Utah. Today’s announcement cuts the amount of land available for oil shale and tar sands land considerably from what was opened for leasing in 2008.
From: BLM
November 9, 2012
Washington, D.C. – The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) today published a proposed plan to promote research, demonstration and development (RD&D) of oil shale and tar sand resources on BLM-administered land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
The final programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) and plan amendments would make nearly 700,000 acres in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming available for research and development of oil shale, and about 130,000 acres in Utah for activities related to tar sands.
Editor’s Note: The following are letters printed in the Daily Sentinel. The letters illustrate the public’s growing frustration with BLM’s change of position on Oil Shale. Specifically, Ms. Hall argues that BLM’s “agenda is to halt oil shale development in its tracks — regardless of the facts, the outcomes of any studies or the benefits of oil shale production. Chris Treese of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, and Dr. Jeremy Boak, director of the Center for Oil Shale Technology and Research at the Colorado School of Mines, are noted experts in their field and are more qualified to speak on matters pertaining to the Colorado River and oil shale development than are the distinguished officials from Nevada and Arizona.
From: KREX
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. – The Checks and Balances Project, a Colorado watchdog group, is accusing Club 20, in partnership with Environmentally Conscious Consumers for Oil Shale, otherwise known as ECCOS, of purposefully misrepresenting stakeholder comments when they claimed a majority of those polled are in favor of more land use for oil shale development.
The Denver-based organization reviewed the stakeholder comments and say that based on their interpretation, 51 percent of those polled are in opposition to using more land for oil shale, while 37 percent are for it.
From: Fox Business
By Elizabeth MacDonald
The U.S. oil and natural-gas rush will add 1.7 million jobs this year at wages on average of about $35 an hour, “dramatically higher” than the average $23 an hour for other jobs in the economy, says consultant IHS in a new report.
IHS also forecasts the number of U.S. jobs in this booming industry will swell to 2.5 million by 2015, and to nearly 3.5 million jobs in 2035, noting this will be “high-quality and high-paying” work paying more than manufacturing jobs.
GLENWOOD SPRINGS — The Garfield Board of County Commissioners has agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by several citizens groups over a private meeting with oil shale industry representatives held in Vernal, Utah, last March.
The Grand Valley Citizens Alliance, the Western Colorado Congress, and Parachute resident Paul Light brought the lawsuit against the Garfield BOCC.
The suit alleged that the commissioners violated Colorado’s Open Meetings Law by failing to post public notice of the Vernal gathering. The Open Meetings Law requires public notice anytime a quorum of county commissioners meets to discuss public business.
Editor’s Note: This is an example the environmental NGO’s misidentifying the issue with Oil Shale Development in the United States. The CRE recently released a white paper outlining the issues concerning oil shale development. The paper found:
“Unfortunately, the Coalition is unable to support this proposition [oil shale’s adverse impact on water availability] with any data. While it is important to be cautious about water resource availability and its competing uses, the
Environmental NGO Coalition’s assertion also contradicts the data incorporated into the PEIS by BLM. Both the 2008 PEIS and 2012 draft PEIS conclude that there will be a water surplus of 340,348 (ac-ft/yr) in 2000 and 268,425 (ac-ft/yr) in 2030 in Colorado.”
From: Columbus Dispatch
Drilling companies beginning to explore the Utica shale got a piece of good news last week when the U.S. Geological Survey estimated the rock formation in Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states holds enormous reserves of natural gas and oil.
Releasing its first estimate of the Utica, the USGS calculated that the shale formation holds about 38 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, recoverable natural gas, 940 million barrels of oil and 9 million barrels of natural gas liquids such as ethane and propane.
By Oil & Gas Financial Journal
The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan signed a deal with Canada’s Global Oil Shale Holdings Ltd. (GOSH) to study the economic feasibility of an oil shale project Jordan.
GOSH is an oil shale exploration and development company focused on the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. On September 17, the company’s general manager, David Argile, signed a 24-month Memorandum of Understanding with Energy Minister Alaa Batayneh granting an estimated 250 square kilometer area for study in GOSH’s main focus areas, Attarat Umm Ghudran and Isfir Al Mahatta in the central and southern regions of the country.
Do you want to have a major impact on US energy policy? Simply have an NGO, acting in the “public interest”, sue the USG government and obtain a settlement which is not subject to the procedural safeguards of the Administrative Procedure Act nor OMB review under Executive Order 12886.
CRE finds it incomprehensible that oil shale offers the United States the potential to extract over 1.5 trillion barrels of oil, an amount about equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves, yet BLM has drastically shifted its policy position to one which will prohibit the development of this vital resource.. This is especially troubling in that the 2008 PEIS BLM specifically outlined two additional steps of environmental analysis that would need to be completed before any oil could be commercially extracted. CRE recommends the following: