As Americans began sending young soldiers over to fight in the trenches of France during World War I, federal officials, boosters, promoters and news publications began to beat the drum for oil shale. Riches from gushers of oil were promised, with the then-secretary of the Interior promising that oil extracted from rocks mined out of the ground and burned on the surface was economically competitive with standard oil drilling. Soon, thousands of Americans began flocking to Colorado seeking their fortune.
Yet the promised gusher never occurred.
Nearly 90 years later, the long-suffering promise of oil shale in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah has yet to be realized. And in that time — despite potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of research that failed to find an economic way to produce oil, tax subsidies that failed to stimulate production and sacrifices of public land and groundwater — not a single commercial gallon of oil from shale has gone into an American vehicle fuel tank.
Even today, most industry insiders say it could be at least another decade before they would begin to produce commercial levels of oil from sedimentary shale rocks in the West.
That is what Exxon and several other companies said in the second massive oil shale boom of the early 1980s.
Under threat that the industry would have to eventually be self-supporting and when oil prices fell, Exxon and the other companies quickly abandoned oil shale. Exxon fired more than 2,200 employees on May 2, 1982 — a day known as “Black Sunday” in Western Colorado. Other companies followed Exxon’s move, causing a massive economic collapse that took Western Colorado years to recover from.
Today, there is no economically viable way to extract the kerogen out of oil shale, and companies pursuing oil shale technology readily admit that it may be another decade before one is ready. Unlike most oil formations, liquid oil isn’t trapped in the shale. In fact, oil shale is neither oil nor shale but is a massive resource of hydrocarbon compounds called kerogen trapped in marlstone.
All we know about oil shale today is the massive toll it could take on the West’s air and water. The best publicly available data reveals that annual oil shale development could require 50 percent more water than the Denver metro area consumes each year. That is on top of the 10 new coal-fired power plants that may be needed to generate 1 million barrels of oil per day.
Despite the problems of oil shale and nearly a century of failed efforts, the federal government continues to encourage oil shale production on taxpayer-owned land. The Bureau of Land Management is now analyzing the potential environmental impacts of issuing two more oil shale research leases in the West.
The agency recently held seven public hearings in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado that will guide the drafting of a new land management plan for the future of oil shale development. In this new plan, the agency will determine whether it is appropriate to open up more than 2 million acres across Colorado, Wyoming and Utah to potential oil shale production.
The future of the West’s air and water could be severely compromised by oil shale. We must demand that the BLM move with extreme caution and learn all the potential costs of development before committing additional taxpayer-owned land.
Craig Thompson is also a professor of engineering and earth science at Western Wyoming Community College and a former oil shale worker.
