A Colorado public interest group has filed an open records request with county leaders involved in a closed-door oil shale meeting in March, the Glenwood Springs Post Independent reports. The meeting between county commissioners took place in Vernal, Utah on March 27 and involved county leaders from Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. Colorado Common Cause claims that the closed door meeting on federal land policy violated Utah’s open meeting laws.
“We feel public business should be done in public, and it appears in this instance that we had county commissioners crossing state lines, meeting in secret, and not providing transparency to their constituents,” Elena Nunez, the executive director of Colorado Common Cause said in a prepared statement.
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Posted by jhanson
May
02
2012
Today marks the 30th anniversary of Black Sunday, the day the Exxon closed its Colony Project and suddenly threw more than 2000 people out of work, sending Shale Country communities into a devastating economic tail spin. Colorado Public Radio marked the anniversary by talking to Andrew Gulliford, a historian who lived through the bust and later wrote the book on it.
If you’ve ever wondered why Black Sunday still seems to cast such a dark shadow over today’s oil shale industry, listen to Ryan Warner’s interview with Professor Gilliford on Colorado Matters.
To read more about Black Sunday and it’s aftermath, read Andrew Gulliford’s Boomtown Blues. You can order a copy of the book on Amazon.com.
The time for Westerners to make their voices heard on the BLM’s approach to oil shale is coming to a close this week. The public comment period for the 2012 Draft Oil Shale and Tar Sands Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) ends this Friday, May 4.
We urge everyone interested in oil shale to comment on the draft PEIS before the period closes and the BLM makes their decision on oil shale development later this summer. The draft PEIS will play an important role in determining if and how the oil shale industry will emerge in the near future by determining how much of Shale Country will be open for leases and what types of leases will be available.
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After the break: Read more about the alternatives outlined in the PEIS.
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County commissioners from Pitkin County, Colorado voted to take a cautious approach to oil shale extraction in western Colorado. The commissioners voted in support of Alternative 3 in the Oil Shale and Tar Sand Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, which limits oil shale leasing to the already existing permits on 26,880 acres in Colorado. Pitkin County limited their opinion to only the development that would occur within Colorado, not in Wyoming or Utah, the Aspen Times has reported.
Alternative 3 is the most conservative of the alternatives in the draft PEIS. The Bureau of Land Management’s preferred alternative opens about 10,000 more acres for more RD&D leases. The position taken by a coalition of western counties, meanwhile, supports the 2008 PEIS which opened nearly 2 million acres for commercial oil shale leasing.
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After the break: Analysis of Pitkin County’s stance and differences with other Shale Country counties.
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County commissioners from Shale Country are uniting together against the BLM’s new approach to oil shale and calling for the BLM to stick with the plan already in place so that the industry might take off. Commissioners from Mesa County, Colorado, and Uintah County, Utah, unanimously voted to pass separate resolutions denouncing the federal government’s plan to cut the amount of land potentially available for oil shale development in western Colorado, eastern Utah, and southern Wyoming, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel (subscription required) and The Salt Lake Tribune report. The resolutions ask the Bureau of Land Management to cease all activities on the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) and to extend the public comment period beyond the May 4 deadline.
The wording in these resolutions is essentially the same as those recently passed in Garfield County and Rio Blanco County. They blast the Bureau of Land Management for being “anti-oil shale pro-wilderness” and blame the Department of Energy for abdicating their responsibilities to manage and maintain an oil shale industry.
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More after the break.
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County commissioners from Garfield County unanimously approved a resolution Monday to denounce the federal government’s plan to reduce the amount of acreage potentially available for oil shale development in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, the Glenwood Springs Post Independent reports.
The resolution takes a sharp tone against the federal government’s approach to oil shale. The county commissioners accuse the Bureau of Land Management of being “encumbered by a host of anti-oil shale pro-wilderness groups steering the BLM’s every move.”
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After the break: Details about the resolution and reaction among Garfield County residents.
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County officials from Shale Country will meet today to discuss a joint resolution put forward by several county commissioners criticizing the Obama’s administration’s approach to oil shale. The Glenwood Springs Post Independent reports that Garfield County is leading a tri-state resolution to promote oil shale development within the region.
All three Garfield County commissioners Tom Jankovsky, John Martin, and Mike Samson - all Republicans - joined commissioners from other Shale Country counties in Vernal, Utah, during the week of March 26 to denounce the 2012 Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement recently released by the Bureau of Land Management. The preferred alternative by the BLM in the draft limits oil shale land for development to less than 460,000 and only for research, not commercial operations.
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After the break: Details on the resolution.
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A new report by Margaret Hobson for E&E Publishing extensively covers the oil shale industry as it stands today. The report is up to date with the recent developments of Red Leaf Resources, who recently received a permit to begin operations in the Uintah Basin in Utah, and the new Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement from the Bureau of Land Management. The report also discusses the pros and cons of the oil shale industry and features a statement from the Center of the American West’s very own Jason Hanson.
E&E Publishing is an online publication that covers energy and environmental issues in the U.S. and throughout the world.
Click here to read the article.
The Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining (DOGM) has granted a permit to Red Leaf Resources to begin extracting oil shale in the Uintah Basin in eastern Utah.
As first reported in the Deseret News, Red Leaf Resources is planning to begin large-scale oil shale operations on 1,500 acres in the Uintah Basin and expects production to begin later this year. Red Leaf Resources holds 18 mineral leases on close to 17,000 acres of state owned school trust lands in Utah.
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After the break: Read more about Red Leaf’s EcoShale technology and why Utah’s oil shale is different than Colorado’s.
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It seems that oil shale is capturing the attention of Westerners yet again. The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports that some 75 people attended the first public meeting on the new oil shale plan in Silt, Colorado and The Salt Lake Tribune reports that a crowd of over 100 attended in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Bureau of Land Management is holding public meetings on a new Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement that scales back a Bush-era plan for land available for oil shale leasing.
The BLM agreed to take a fresh look at leasing oil shale lands in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah after a 2008 PEIS was challenged in a lawsuit by a coalition of environmental groups. That plan, released in 2008 during the last days of the Bush Administration, opened roughly 2 million acres of land for commercial oil shale and tar sand leases.
The BLM’s preferred plan in the new Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement would make 461,965 acres available across the three states and only for RD&D leasing, not commercial leasing. The total land made available under Alternative 2(b) is 830,000 acres, which is drawn from an alternative in the 2008 plan, but sensitive areas like the Adobe Town in Wyoming and sage-grouse habitats have been removed.
(Below the jump: oil shale in politics, sentiments in Utah and Colorado, and how you can get involved.)
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