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Currently the Bureau of Land Management is accepting public comments on the programmatic environmental impact statement for oil shale and tar sands resources in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
The oil-shale-producing areas across these three states make up the largest known oil shale deposit in the world, according to the Department of Energy. Most of the resources are found here in northwest Colorado.
It is estimated that 800 billion to 1 trillion barrels of recoverable oil exists within the deposits of the Green River Formation. The potential oil-shale resources within the Green River Formation are more than 50 times the United States’ current proven conventional oil reserves and about three times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia.
The PEIS will help create a standard commercial leasing program like the one we have for natural gas. The PEIS does not dictate how the leases should be dealt with nor does it give directive for specific mitigations. That happens at another step in the National Environmental Policy Act process.
Concerns about water, air, environment, health, safety and socioeconomics will all be dealt with in a site-specific basis once a commercial oil shale process has been created.
Therefore, it is important when commenting on the PEIS to make sure your comments are within the scope of the document. Comments are due March 10. Please send them to: BLM Oil Shale and Tar Sands Draft PEIS, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 South Cass Avenue, Argonne, Ill. 60439.
JASON SINCLAIR
Grand Junction
One Response to “Public comments on oil shale development is essential”
Posted February 26th, 2008 at 8:35 am Login to Send PM Report this comment
Actually it is the EIS that commits the resource and sets the general parameters by which a resource will be mined.
Sure, the site specific analysis that is done when a specific project is proposed is where specific mitigations are applied. But it is the EIS that commits the resource, making it available for leasing, and making it very hard for anyone to challenge any specific leasing decision (that ‘decision was already made in the EIS’ the feds will argue).
As Jason points out one can look at the BLM’s O&G leasing program for a rough correlation. Here we see BLM leasing all sorts of places it shouldn’t: in riparian areas and city watersheds, wildlife refuges, state parks, etc. arguing that it has little choice because a decision has already been made to make these lands (or minerals) for o&g drilling in [insert long-ago year here, such as 1985 for GJ area, 1993 for GMUG forest, etc. etc.]. What BLM is doing–based on its long history with other energy leases and development–is basically punting to itself. THe agency is arguing in a circle, that now it is only looking at ‘big picture’ and ‘programmatic’ issues and that the nitty-gritty will be hashed out in site-specific reviews. Then, when the time comes for site-specific decisions, the agency will (based on historical record) that it has to lease the lands, and that impacts to water, air, land, wildlife, communities, etc. will just have to be ‘mitigated’ even if those impacts are deemed unacceptable to a current (or future) town, state, community, etc.
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