Contents

Engineering a Boom

How to Make a Mining Boom

The gloom in Shale Country didn't last long. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter gave a series of televised speeches to Congress and the American public (including one fireside chat in which he infamously donned a tan cardigan) outlining a new energy policy to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil. Calling the difficult task ahead "the moral equivalent of war," Carter argued that Americans "must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century."

President Jimmy Carter explained his energy strategy to the public during...

The 1979 Iranian Revolution punctuated his point, accelerating fears about the security of the nation's foreign oil supply. The following year, Carter signed the Energy Security Act of 1980, allotting billions of dollars for the creation of a Synthetic Fuels Corporation that would provide loans, price guarantees, and other financial incentives to stimulate synthetic fuel development projects. A dozen companies immediately applied for money to support their oil shale endeavors and began gearing up for production.¹⁷

The industry got another boost when the Supreme Court agreed to settle the long-running dispute between the Department of the Interior and some oil shale claimholders over the validity of their purchased claims. Interior insisted that many of the claims never met the criterion of the 1872 and 1897 hardrock and petroleum mining laws, which specified that only a discovery of "valuable mineral deposits" could be patented. Because oil shale had never been profitably developed, the department argued, it could not be considered valuable. Under that logic, the pre-1920 claims, most of which had sat unworked for decades, were not legitimate and had technically reverted back to the government, making their purchase by private third (and, in many cases, fourth and fifth) parties like the Savage and Ertl families invalid.

However, in June 1980 the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the claimholders in Andrus v. Shell Oil Co., citing an earlier Interior Department ruling that "present marketability" is not required to recognize certain minerals as valuable and therefore affirming the validity of their oil shale claims as a vested property right. The decision removed a significant legal and economic risk for companies that wanted in on the action in Shale Country. And with the stars aligning for another oil shale boom, energy companies moved fast to ensure that they were not left out. Even before the court's decision was announced, in April Philips Petroleum paid the Ertl family a hefty premium with promises of multimillion-dollar royalties for a long-term lease on some of the family's land.¹⁸

After the passage of the Energy Security Act, Carter next proposed the creation of a national Energy Mobilization Board with the sweeping authority to bypass state and local permitting processes, as well as national environmental regulations, in the interest of national security. Though many expressed their willingness to do their part for the good of the nation, a vocal contingent of residents of the Western Slope saw this proposal as an attempt to turn their home territory into a "national sacrifice zone" and fiercely opposed it with the support of a number of Western governors. Carter had overreached, Congress rejected the proposal, and the phrase "national sacrifice zone" still rings bitterly in the ears of Western Slopers.

However, no more federal mobilization or legislated local sacrifice was necessary; Carter had already done enough to promote an energy rush on the Western Slope. The boom was on.