After decades of inaction, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 put oil shale planning on a fast track. It directed the BLM to analyze the environmental, economic, and social impacts of oil shale development in a Programmatic EIS, the draft of which is expected this summer. This environmental review could then form the basis of a commercial leasing program that might occur as early as 2008.
But oil shale research and development activities will barely have gotten started by then, and neither the public nor the BLM can possibly know the full range of environmental and social impacts of the development or whether the technology works. The BLM should let companies conduct research and development activities before it holds a commercial lease sale. We need to know that the technology works, and that it won’t have unacceptable impacts on the environment or Western Slope communities.
Oil Shale Would Affect Valuable Water Supplies
Oil shale development will use vast amounts of water. Mining and retorting oil shale takes up to five barrels of water to produce just one barrel of oil in one of the West's driest areas. Shell Oil Corporation, currently advancing its experimental method of heating the shale in place, acknowledges that water use for their in-situ method is significant and water supplies are likely to be a limiting factor. BLM has found that oil shale development would lead to up to an 8.2 percent reduction in the annual flow of the White River.
Oil shale also leaves behind a huge mess. Spent oil shale results in highly-saline runoff that could degrade water quality in nearby creeks or require costly treatment in perpetuity. A million-barrel per day oil shale industry could increase salinity in the Lower Basin by up to 2.4 percent. New experimental in-situ technologies could pose huge risks to ground water, and Shell’s proposed "freeze wall" has never before been used in developing oil shale.
Clean water in the Upper Colorado River Basin is tightly regulated and in high demand. BLM must find out how much water will be needed and what impacts oil shale could have on it before it OKs any commercial leasing.
Oil Shale Would Have Huge Impacts on Existing Uses of the Land
Mining and retorting oil shale which produces a huge amount of spent rock: a 100,000-barrel-per-day industry would require disposal of up to 150,000 tons of waste rock each day, or 55 million tons annually. Plus, crushing and retorting oil shale increases the volume of the spent shale by up to 30 percent, compounding disposal problems. On the other hand, while new in-situ methods appear to avoid surface-disposal problems, they results in nearly 100% occupation of the land. Shell’s in-situ method requires 15 to 25 heating holes per acre, plus wells for recovery of the produced oil and gas and additional wells to construct and maintain a freeze wall. The in-situ production zones would be stripped of vegetation and would take a decade or more to recover.
Regardless of the method of development, oil shale would require significant new industrial infrastructure. Roads, power plants, power distribution systems, pipelines, water storage and supply facilities, and construction staging and storage areas would impose additional demands on the landscape.
BLM needs reliable information on how much oil shale development would change the landscape, and it must analyze the effects on people and wildlife, including associated infrastructure, before it OKs any commercial leasing.
Oil Shale Would Dramatically Affect Population Growth in Western Colorado
During the short-lived oil shale boom of the 1980s, federal officials estimated oil shale development would result in an eight-fold population increase in Rio Blanco County and more than triple the population of Garfield County. A ten-fold population increase was projected for Rifle, Meeker and Rangely. In the 1980s, the BLM set a carrying capacity threshold of 5-15% annual growth rate in these communities, meaning that a project that would result in growth exceeding this amount would not be leased or approved.
The potential community impacts from a new oil shale industry are undeniable. With new industry comes significant numbers of people and increased demands on our government, our roads, our schools, and our hospitals. Oil shale would add to the trend of local growth and strain caused by the recent rapid growth of the oil and gas industry in northwestern Colorado in the last decade.
BLM needs current information on the growth we can expect from oil shale, and what effects this growth will have on our communities before any commercial leasing.
Oil Shale Would Cause Serious Air Pollution
All of the areas primed for oil shale development currently enjoy high-quality air. But the mining and processing of shale produces numerous toxic pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, ozone, and particulates, and the power plants required for in-situ development alone would release ten million tons of greenhouse gases. According to the Denver Post, the combination of oil shale production and the necessary coal-fired power plants would create four times the amount of greenhouses gases as from the production of conventional crude oil.
The BLM recently found exhaust and dust from the five in-situ R&D projects, along with new oil and gas development planned for the area, would noticeably degrade visibility at nearby Flat Tops Wilderness for up to three weeks each year.
BLM must find out the current air-quality baseline, and it must find out how much pollution will result from traditional above-ground retorts, in-situ processing, and power generation before allowing any commercial leasing.
Oil Shale Would Require Huge Amounts of Energy
Extracting oil from rock requires massive amounts of energy. A 100,000 barrel-per-day oil shale operation using Shell’s in-situ conversion technology would require 1,200 megawatts of electricity -- which would require a new power plant as large as any currently operating in Colorado, enough to serve a city of 500,000. This power plant, costing about $3 billion, would consume five million tons of coal each year. To produce one million barrels of shale oil a day (as has been proposed) would require ten new power plants and five new coal mines to serve them.
BLM must know where this energy would come from and what impacts its generation would have on the landscape, communities, and air quality before it goes forward with commercial leasing.
Oil Shale Would Take Away Valuable Fish & Wildlife Habitat
Elk, deer, and aquatic species including native fish could be seriously impacted by a full-scale oil-shale industry. BLM has estimated that large-scale oil shale development would result in the permanent loss of nearly 50 percent of BLM stream fisheries. BLM also found that water disruptions would result in the loss of 35% of Colorado River cutthroat trout fisheries. Oil shale would doom up to 11% of available nest and brood range for blue and sage grouse to long-term loss.
BLM must know what effects an oil shale industry would have on fish and wildlife before it offers commercial leases.
BLM SHOULD GO SLOW ON OIL SHALE!
For more information, contact:
Cathy Kay at (970) 256-7650 email cathy@wccongress.org
Western Colorado Congress, PO Box 1931, Grand Junction, CO 81502.
Bob Randall at (303) 444-1188 email bob@westernresources.org
Western Resource Advocates, 2260 Baseline Road, Suite 200, Boulder CO 80302
Also, check out the following resources for more information:
Office of Technology Assessment, “An Assessment of Oil Shale Technologies” (June 1980).
Available at: http://www.wws.princeton.edu/ota/ns20/year_f.html
RAND Corporation, “Oil Shale Development in the United States” (2005).
Available at: http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG414.pdf
Randy Udall, “The Illusive Bonanza: Oil Shale in Colorado” (2005).
Available at: http://www.aspencore.org/images/pdf/OilShale.pdf
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