Earth Equity News

Oil Shale Development Becoming a Critical Election Issue. By Michael Riley, Denver Post, August 17, 2008. "Over five years here [in Garfield County, Colorado], Shell Oil conducted a series of secretive experiments that have the potential to blow open the status quo of North American oil production, unlocking the vast reserves of oil shale that underlie Colorado's Western Slope... Beginning in 2002, Shell drilled a honeycombed series of wells, then lowered in giant heating elements, raising the temperature of the shale to 650 degrees F for 12 months. Out flowed an abundance of high-quality shale oil. 'It was our 'eureka' moment,' said Tracy Boyd... [of] Shell... 'Now we know we have a technology that works.' ...The fight over oil shale has become a major issue in Colorado's U.S. Senate race as well as a regular talking point for Republicans nationwide. At the White House in June, President Bush blasted Democrats for 'standing in the way' of oil-shale development and hurting ordinary Americans... One of the critical breakthroughs of Shell's process is that it heats the shale in the ground slowly -- over a period of about three years... The area where the shale is being heated is surrounded by... a 3-foot-thick wall of ice, created by circulating aqueous ammonia into deep wells for a year and a half. Both processes take enormous amounts of electricity... New power plants to feed the system would probably spew lots of carbon. And the refineries... [needed] to process the liquids could contaminate the air. But the biggest impact may be on water. Rand estimates that it would take three barrels of water to produce one barrel of shale oil... [and it would have to come from] the relatively scarce resources of the semi-arid Western Slope... 'Even though the [eventual] benefits of oil shale are nationwide in terms of... oil prices, the environmental impacts of oil shale are almost 100% Colorado,' said [James] Bartis, [a national oil-shale expert at the Rand Corporation]."