DENVER-
Despite a lobbying trip to Washington, state officials aren’t optimistic they’ll get more time to study a federal plan for wide-scale oil shale development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter and Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal had asked the Interior Department for more than two weeks to evaluate the federal plan. That period was set aside for certain agencies before the plan is made public. Colorado state officials lobbied the Interior Department on Monday and Tuesday to support Ritter and Freudenthal’s written requests.
“We weren’t given a lot of reason to be hopeful,” Mike King, deputy director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, said Friday.
King and Harris Sherman, the department’s executive director, urged Interior officials to extend the states’ review period through Sept. 11. Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, federal agencies and a few local governments will get copies of the draft environmental impact statement next week.
“We think that’s inadequate to do justice to the review we want to give it,” King said.
Ritter and Freudenthal say the states need more time to review the document, which will address environmental, social and economic impacts of commercial oil-shale development on federal lands in western Colorado, eastern Utah and southwestern Wyoming. Utah also is considering requesting an extension.
Shale reserves in Colorado, Utah and southwest Wyoming are believed to contain at least 1 trillion barrels of oil—three times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia, or enough to theoretically supply the United States for a century.
But the oil, or kerogen, is locked in layers of hard rock, and the technology for affordably heating and extracting the liquid is still evolving. Local governments have urged federal officials to move cautiously because the impact on water and other resources isn’t clear.
In Washington, Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Heather Feeney said the Interior Department, BLM’s parent agency, was preparing a formal response to the governors.
“It looks like there might be an extension of some kind. I can’t characterize how long or short that might be,” Feeney said. But she noted that the original deadline for the final environmental impact statement was February.
Feeney said the states, along with some local governments, have already seen portions of the document because of their status as cooperating agencies, which gives them more opportunity for input. “They’re not going to be getting a huge document that’s going to be all new,” Feeney said.
They will have an additional 90 days to review the plan after the draft is released to the public, Feeney added.
King said Colorado has seen only preliminary drafts of “boilerplate” sections of the environmental impact statement, expected to be about 2,000 pages.
Last year, the Interior Department approved 10-year leases for oil-shale research and development projects for Shell Frontier Oil & Gas Co., Chevron USA and EGL Resources Inc. on separate sites in northwest Colorado. Oil Shale Exploration Co. won approval last month of an experimental project in Utah.
Area officials and residents also are wary because of the oil-shale bust of the early 1980s. Western Colorado’s economy was sent reeling when falling oil prices led Exxon to shut down its $5 billion Colony oil-shale project in Parachute and lay off 2,200 workers.
Ritter, who took office in January, also wants more time to review the BLM’s final plan for the Roan Plateau in western Colorado that would allow the drilling of up to 1,570 natural gas wells over 20 years.
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On the Net:
Oil Shale and Tar Sands Leasing Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement:
