In the recent environmental impact statement on development of oil shale on 2.3 million acres of public land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) “proposes to amend 12 land use plans and to decide which of those areas will be open for application for commercial leasing, exploration and development.” This is the only environmental evaluation of oil-shale development until after specific public lands are leased to industry. Yet of the 172 pages of “Effects of Oil Shale Technologies,” fewer than five describe the impacts to air quality including only three paragraphs on climate change. Any entry-level environmental specialist could have written that after a five-minute brainstorming session.

I have calculated what BLM omitted and the results are astounding. Using the Shell process to produce enough shale crude to replace our current level of oil imports, some 12 million barrels per day, would require a 74 percent increase in total U.S. coal-fired electric generation resulting in an additional three billion (with a “b”) tons (not pounds) of CO2 emissions every year. If BLM had endeavored such an estimate, they might not have chosen the alternative that maximizes the amount of public land available for development, particularly when no commercially-viable technology currently exists.
I encourage everyone to go online at http://ostseis.anl.gov/ and comment on this significant action that is so trivialized by our government. The deadline for comments is March 20.
GREG SCOTT
Evergreen

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 10:09 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.