BLM Oil Shale

Mike Wereschagin,

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

In a booming economy, even oil and water can mix.

Chris Duell left his Detroit home at the age of 30 to start a water filtration business in this isolated town just north of the Missouri River.

It was 2008, and more than a mile below the quiet region near the Montana border, dozens of drill bits turned horizontally to burrow into the Bakken shale formation.

The horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technology that ignited the Marcellus shale natural gas boom cracked open one of the largest oil fields in the United States. By this spring, barely four years after Williston’s boom began in earnest, North Dakota produced more oil than Alaska.

Fro: The Daily Sentinel

By Gary Harmon
Thursday, August 30, 2012

The Bureau of Land Management today approved two leases that will will allow companies to test possible ways of extracting petroleum from the Piceance Basin of western Colorado.

ExxonMobil Exploration Co. and Natural Soda Holdings Inc., will test their technologies that would allow the companies to test technologies to heat solid oil shale underground to release and capture kerogen, a petroleum-like substance.  Each company will have a 160-acre lease in Rio Blanco County about 35 miles southwest of Meeker.

Editor’s  Note:  The  record  for  the EIS  that the BLM is developing  for oil shale development  demonstrates that adequate safeguards are in place for the protection of the quality and quanity of  water. In addition the decision presently before BLM is to only designate the acreage available for future exploration and development.  Any development on the said land must go through a very comprehensive permitting process. See following article :  The Stages of Environmental Analysis

Northern  Colorado Business  Report

Oil shale development should take a backseat to water conservation, environmental groups, business owners, farmers, ranchers and others wrote the Bureau of Land Management on Wednesday.

From: Wall Street Journal

Interior gives an environmental pass to its business friends.

Who says President Obama isn’t pro-business? The trick is being a business he likes.

Several weeks ago in a remarkable but little-noticed policy directive, the Interior Department announced that it will allow construction permitting on 285,000 acres of public land in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah for solar energy projects. Even more remarkable, Interior said that energy firms can petition Interior to build solar installations “on approximately 19 million acres”—a larger land mass than Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont combined.

From: Billings Gazette

As veterans of the American armed services, the importance of ensuring America’s natural security resonates with us very deeply. We once wore the uniform of our country every day with the mission to keep our country safe and secure. Today, we are concerned about how our weakness in energy security leaves us weak on the national security front.

On July 11, we, along with other distinguished American veterans from 26 states, flew to Washington, D.C.

From: ABC4

VERNAL, Utah (AP) – The Uintah CountyCommission is acknowledging a “technical” violation of the state’s open-meeting law when it met to privately discuss a federal plan for oil shale development with officials from Utah, Wyoming and Colorado.

Utah law generally requires 24-hour notice be given before public meetings. The Deseret News reports that in court records filed Wednesday, county attorney Jonathan Stearmer said notice for the 10 a.m. March 27 meeting on oil shale was posted at 10:04 a.m. March 26.

Vernal resident Sandy Hansen had filed a lawsuit alleging the March meeting was illegal.

From: The Jerusalem Post

By SHARON UDASIN

Extracting oil shale can provide Israel energy security, if done in environmentally friendly manner, expert says.
“Unless there is some major breakthrough that we can’t envision yet, we will be dependent on oil for most of our transportation for decades to come,” said Dr. Patrick Moore, chairman and chief scientist of the Vancouver- based Greenspirit Strategies Ltd.While people must dramatically change their behaviors to reduce their negative impact on the environment, oil is a critical energy source that will be here to stay for the foreseeable future, according to a prominent Canadian environmentalist.

From: Gloucester Times

A former New Bedford mayor has been tapped by the U.S. Department of Commerce to take over as the Northeast regional administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service, based out of Gloucester’s Blackburn Industrial Park.

John K. Bullard was appointed Monday by Samuel Rauch, the Commerce Department’s deputy assistant administrator for fisheries, out of NOAA headquarters in Silver Spring, Md.

In his new post, Bullard, who served as New Bedford’s mayor from 1986 through 1992, will step into the position held previously by Patricia Kurkul, who stepped aside in December.