Oil-shale development gains cautious support

Western Slope leaders say they've learned from past

Ellen Miller, Special to the News

Published May 31, 2006 at midnight

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GRAND JUNCTION - Business and civic leaders on the Western Slope, noting they've "learned from the sins of the past," said Tuesday they're behind oil-shale development provided it is done with a "go-slow, deliberative" approach.

More than a quarter century ago, a large development effort ended in a devastating economic bust from which it took the region most of a decade to recover.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management could issue five research and development leases this fall in Colorado and one in Utah, while a separate environmental study could result in commercial oil-shale leases being issued in 18 months to two years.

Whether commercial leasing begins in 2008 or later "is not necessarily contingent" on how companies do with their research leases, said BLM spokesman Dave Boyd.

"Everybody learned from the bust," said Kathy Hall, chairwoman of Club 20, the Western Slope's lobbying and promotional organization. "This fits the Club 20 policy, and it's important that we be part of the decisions. It's not like the late '70s and early '80s when it was a big government project. It's private company dollars, and we support that."

Billions of dollars sunk into the oil-shale boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s ended in failure, as did other, smaller efforts in the 1920s and the 1950s.

Hall's comments came two days before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is set to hold a field hearing in Grand Junction to hear testimony on the status of oil shale research and potential for commercial development. The hearing is scheduled for Thursday morning

Sens. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., and Pete Domenici, R-N.M., are scheduled to tour Shell's research project west of Meeker today, and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is expected to join them for a tour of oil-shale research near Vernal, Utah, on Thursday afternoon.

Northwestern Colorado, eastern Utah and southwestern Wyoming are thought to contain 1 trillion barrels of oil in the "rock that burns" of the Green River Formation, which has proven notoriously difficult to exploit.

Hall was joined by representatives of the Grand Junction Chamber of Commerce and Grand Junction Energy Task Force who said the area will be part of the nation's solution to energy shortages in coming years.

Already the area is bursting with natural gas drilling, and other alternative sources of energy need full exploration, said Bonnie Pehl-Peterson, who heads the Energy Task Force.

"Our energy demands will be exponentially higher," she said. "We must develop alternatives through innovation. We don't want to see the environment destroyed where we live."

Hall said western Colorado wants a role in energy research, "whether it's oil shale, fuel cells or coal gasification, even nuclear."

The impacts of growth brought by oil-shale industry workers could be met by companies paying royalties in advance and through mineral severance taxes imposed by the state, suggested Craig Meis, a Mesa County commissioner.

"We've learned from the sins of the past," he said.

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