Washington – Senators concerned with high gasoline prices will be touring western Colorado this month to look into the potential of oil shale to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
“There are a couple of American aces in the hole. One of those, without question, is shale oil,” said Senate energy committee chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M. “We believe the United States is the Saudi Arabia of shale.”
Domenici says the U.S. won’t be so dependent on unstable foreign governments “if what I think is going to happen happens: that … in less than 10 years, we’d have production of, say, in excess of 200,000 barrels a day coming from a small piece of land in Colorado.”
The Senate trip is to start May 30 and run through at least June 2. But the details are still sketchy, starting with how many senators will be going and what they’ll be seeing and doing.
Senate staffers say they’re considering holding a field hearing on the Western Slope. Domenici said Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., had pushed him to meet with more residents and activists.
The United States has an estimated 1.8 trillion barrels of oil trapped in shale, most of it concentrated in the Green River Formation, which covers northwestern Colorado and parts of Utah and Wyoming. That’s more than all the proven reserves of crude oil in the world today.
But western Colorado has ridden an oil-shale boom before, and many residents still feel burned by promises from politicians and oil companies about shale in the late 1970s. Shale went bust when oil prices faltered, and it took years for the western Colorado economy to recover.
