Counties in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming oil-shale country have banded together in opposition to a proposed federal plan to trim development of the controversial resource.
The would reduce the land for development to 462,000 acres from the 2 million acres just before leaving office.
The resolution — supported by four Colorado counties, two in Wyoming and three in Utah — calls on the BLM to retract its proposal and leave the Bush plan in place. The Colorado counties are Rio Blanco, Mesa, Garfield and Moffat.
Oil shale has a long, frustrating history in Colorado. Exxon shut down a $5 billion oil-shale project in 1982 on the West Slope, putting 2,200 people out of work. The day became known as Black Sunday.
In 1991, Unocal abandoned an effort to produce oil shale near Parachute. More recent efforts to extract oil from shale deposits have fared about the same, gaining and losing momentum with the rise and fall of oil prices.
The counties drafted their position on the BLM plan at a closed-door session in Vernal, Utah, in March that also was attended by industry representatives — leading to questions of whether open-meeting laws were violated.
“We haven’t seen this kind of coordinated, secret meeting before,” said Elena Nunez, executive director of Colorado Common Cause, a nonprofit advocacy group that has filed an open-records request for details on the meeting.
Mike McKee, a commissioner for Uintah County, Utah, which held the meeting, said it met that state’s open-meetings law. Advance notice was posted and it was held at a public facility, he said. Commissioners from other counties and industry representatives were guests.
Part of the meeting was held in executive session, which McKee said the commission has the right to do when discussing litigation or policy.
The BLM estimates there could be 9 billion barrels of shale oil in the region. But to release the oil requires heating the shale rock. It also requires large amounts of water.
, but there are no commercial operations. Two companies say they are close.
“The BLM is making land available for research, and really that’s all that is going on now,” said David Abelson, an analyst with .
“This is like shooting at stars with rubber bands,” he said.
Mark Jaffe: 303-954-1912 or mjaffe@denverpost.com
