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Salazar presses fight on oil shale

Senator battles to bar development in Colorado

Gargi Chakrabarty

Published September 5, 2008 at 9:05 p.m.

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Ken Salazar assails a "framework for leases" for oil shale.

Ken Salazar assails a "framework for leases" for oil shale.

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U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar is not giving up his fight to block commercial oil shale development in Colorado.

Last year, Salazar engineered a moratorium that blocked the Interior Department from finalizing rules after the Bush administration moved to put in place a legal and regulatory framework to commercially develop oil shale.

The measure expires Sept. 30. Salazar on Friday said he will fight to extend it, even as President Bush and congressional Republicans urge Congress to lift the moratorium.

"What the Bush administration is trying to do is weld into place a framework for leases for commercial oil shale and that is wrong given the concerns about water and environment," Salazar said Friday.

"The Interior Department is getting its directive from the White House to get it all done before the Bush administration leaves town."

The Interior Department says it is following Congress' order under the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

On Thursday, the federal agency set aside 1.9 million acres of public lands - including 360,000 acres in Colorado - for commercial oil shale.

It says leases on public land likely won't be auctioned before 2012 since companies have yet to come up with viable commercial oil shale technologies.

Salazar spoke on the sidelines of an oil and gas conference in Denver. The two-day conference which began Thursday was sponsored by the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States.

Oil shale is a fine-grained sedimentary rock containing organic matter from which oil may be produced, either through heat or a chemical process.

The deposits under Colorado, Utah and Wyoming have about three times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia, according to the Interior Department.

"We estimate (the oil shale) deposits hold the equivalent of 800 billion barrels of oil - enough to meet U.S. demand for imported oil at current levels for 110 years," BLM Director Jim Caswell has said.

The Bureau of Land Management is an arm of the Interior Department which manages public lands for multiple uses, including energy development.

Niger Innis, spokesman of Congress For Racial Equality, criticized Salazar's position in the backdrop of skyrocketing energy prices.

A coalition led by CORE named Salazar as one of the 22 members of Congress who vote against policies that favor affordable energy, he said.

"Salazar and the rest of these politicians vote time and again against policies that would increase energy supply and help to lower prices," Innis said. "Their votes are helping to push energy prices higher, and those rising prices deliver disproportionate punishment to low-income and poor families across America."

At the IPAMS conference, Salazar joked he expected tomatoes to be thrown at him and said the oil and gas industry "needs to turn down the rhetoric a couple of decibels." Salazar said he's among the 16 senators trying to craft a comprehensive energy bill to address rising energy prices, global warming and national energy security.

chakrabartyg@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2976

Comments

  • September 6, 2008

    7:43 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    polyglot writes:

    Is it any wonder why we have to send 700 Billion overseas for oil and gas? Sure glad Salazar is up for election in 2 yrs. Although he will probably let his views mature by then so he can be on the right side and try to pull the wool over our eyes again about being "moderate"