Oil Shale Plan is Out!

Oil Shale Facts | oilshalefacts.org

On December 21st, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released the draft plan for a future commercial oil shale and tar sands leasing and development program. This process will change our air quality, water availability, and wildlife and hunting opportunities for centuries to come if we don't do it right. The BLM needs to slow down and wait for the extractive technologies to be proven before allowing commercial oil shale and tar sands leasing on our public lands.

Citizens, sportsmen, and conservationists have joined forces to prevent another boom and bust cycle like the one we saw in Western Colorado in the late 70's and early 80's. This is your chance to tell the BLM that we support a smart approach to developing our resources, but we should lease and develop at a reasonable pace.

Please take a moment to review some of the disturbing allowances the draft plan makes and let your voice be heard during this public comment period, which ends on April 20th.

You have two options for submitting comments:

(1) Go to the BLM website and submit comments directly by clicking here. See updated fact sheets for helpful comment information.

(2) Add your own comments to the letter below and hit the send message on this page. We will print the letters and hand deliver them before the end of the comment period.

Sample Letter for Campaign

Subject: Comments on the Oil Shale DPEIS

Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,

I appreciate the opportunity to comment on the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Oil Shale and Tar Sands. The development envisioned by the study would come at a time when our land is already experiencing severe pressure from the current energy boom and significant population growth across the West. It is difficult to understand why the BLM is rushing toward a commercial leasing program without even knowing if oil shale development is feasible economically. In light of that, it's even more difficult to understand why the BLM seems so anxious to give oil shale development priority over other uses on our public lands as shale development would likely preclude all other activity, including natural gas development in priority areas.

We must ensure that the oil shale RD&D process has allowed us to asses the impacts of experimental extraction technologies on energy consumption and water use before proceeding with the PEIS. It will be years before companies developing oil shale technology will know if it is technologically or economically feasible.

I urge the BLM to consider the cumulative effects of this industry on wildlife habitat and protected areas across the West. This plan proposes development in some of the best hunting, fishing, and recreation areas in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. We can and should protect these areas from adjacent impacts such as diminished air quality and habitat fragmentation.

Agency regulations and federal law require that the BLM manage its lands for multiple uses, yet the agency admits that oil shale development will displace every other public use of public land to benefit private companies. The cumulative impact of this massive development will negatively affect our air, water, wildlife and communities in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. I urge you to slow down and carefully consider the enormous effect commercial oil shale development would have before committing the West Slope to a future of industrial development and environmental degradation.

Sincerely,

Campaign Launched:
January 31, 2008

Background Information

On May 2, 1982 Colorado was left reeling when the oil shale boom went bust. Now the federal government wants us to trust it again?
www.oilshalefacts.org

The BLM recently released its draft plan for commercial oil shale and tar sands leasing on our public lands. This Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (DPEIS) is intended to analyze the likely environmental, economic, and social impacts of oil shale development. Since research and development of new technologies will not be completed for years, the analysis in this document cannot fully anticipate all potential impacts. The commercial leasing plan also proposes to amend nine BLM Resource Management Plans (RMPs) and puts in place the necessary framework for a commercial leasing program that might begin as early as 2009. The plan details the extensive impacts to air, water, wildlife, communities, and special places in western Colorado as well as Wyoming and Utah.

The BLM plan proposes that industrial oil shale production will monopolize 319,710 acres of public land and 41,940 acres of split estate lands spread between the Glenwood Springs, Grand Junction, and White River BLM Resource Areas in Colorado. The assumptions made in the plan are based on a commercial industry production estimate of 250,000 barrels of oil a day, the creation of a dozen new coal fired power plants, and the use of 15% of the water of western Colorado, as well as other direct and non-direct impacts.

In 2005, Congress gave the BLM arbitrary deadlines to promote a federal research and development program – on public lands – to identify the costs and benefits of promoting oil shale as a domestic fuel source. The corporations permitted to participate in this federal program have yet to move past the initial stages of this process. Companies want to transform oil shale into petroleum using complex, highly experimental, and unproven processes. The leader in oil shale production technology, Shell Energy, has said it won't know if commercial production is feasible until 2010 at the earliest. It would take several more years to scale up production to industrial levels. Research and development of these new technologies have hardly commenced and neither the public nor the BLM know the full range of environmental and social impacts of the proposed development.

Nevertheless, the BLM is rushing to complete the DPEIS process by amending relevant RMPs and advancing development of a full-fledged federal oil shale leasing program by drafting commercial leasing regulations – all without a clear understanding of the technologies that will be used. The document involves a lot of guesswork and vague analysis of unproven technologies and unknowable impacts. The idea that future analyses will be based off this document is frightening. —Akin to building a skyscraper without a foundation, this preliminary document establishes unsound groundwork for an immense industrial transformation that may forever change the character of western Colorado.

Oil shale development is likely to occur in the Piceance Basin, a region already facing development of up to 50,000 new natural gas wells in the coming years. The potential increased impacts to local communities would be astronomical. Colorado has been burned by the irresponsible and romantic allure of oil shale before. Public land managers must have a clearer understanding of production processes and specific impacts before sacrificing hundreds of thousands of acres of the public domain to an industry that's burned us before.

Oil shale developers don't even know if the technology works. What's the rush? The BLM should wait until companies conducting research and development activities have proven their technologies rather than wasting time and money on a speculative analysis of untested and unproven oil shale extraction techniques