As part of its ongoing reporting on the Yampa River, Northern Colorado National Public Radio affiliate KUNC ran a story by Kirk Siegler during today’s Morning Edition show about Shell’s decision to withdraw its claim to the Yampa. Jason Hanson, coauthor of What Every Westerner Should Know About Oil Shale, provided some perspective on what Shell’s announcement might mean - or not mean - for the prospect of future oil shale development. Listen to the story.
Shell has announced that it will withdraw its claims to the Yampa River. Shell had previously filed for rights to the Yampa’s high spring flows, which it intended to store and use for its oil shale operations. The Yampa is the last major river in Colorado with natural seasonal flows, and Shell’s claims had drawn heavy criticism from environmental organizations. You can read more about Shell’s recent announcement in this article by Dennis Webb in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, and more about water issues in Shale Country, including Shell’s plans to transfer water from the Yampa to the Piceance Basin, in the “Water: More Precious than Oil?” section of What Every Westerner Should Know About Oil Shale.
The Promise and Peril of Oil Shale symposium put on by the University of Colorado Law School’s Natural Resources Law Center this Friday in downtown Denver brought together many of the key voices in the debates surrounding oil shale development, including Alan Bartis, Jeremy Boak, Randy Udall, David Bernhardt, Glenn Vawter, and the Center of the American West’s Patty Limerick. Many of the ideas and arguments shared at the conference - although often well-articulated and worth a review on the NRLC’s past event’s page once the video recordings are posted - will be familiar to readers of this report. Among the most notable presentations came from Alan Gilbert, newly appointed senior adviser to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, who provided and update and an explanation of the administration’s more “deliberate” approach to oil shale development. (See Associated Press reporter Judith Kohler’s piece on the conference in the LA Times for more details.)
Next Friday, February 5, 2010, the Natural Resources Law Center of the University of Colorado Law School is hosting a one-day symposium on oil shale development in the West. At the symposium, Patty Limerick will be speaking on “The History of Oil Shale Development and What it Means for the Future.”
Joining Patty will be a variety of Shale Country stakeholders for a full day of discussions on the technology, economics, politics, and environmental impacts raised by the prospect of oil shale development. The event will take place at the Grand Hyatt in downtown Denver, and registration is required for anyone interested in attending.
Natural Soda, Inc., a major producer of baking soda, has applied for a federal RD&D lease to develop oil shale. The company, based in Rio Blanco County, Colorado, already produces sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) from nacholite deposits in the Piceance Basin that often overlap with oil shale deposits. Some of the company’s long-term nacholite leases are adjacent to Shell’s oil shale leases and near Chevron’s, locations that contain significant oil shale deposits, according to the Department of Energy. Natural Soda, which bid unsuccessfully in the last round of RD&D lease offerings, joins ExxonMobil and Arizona-based AuraSouce, Inc., in submitting bids for the new round of lease offerings. (Reported by Dennis Webb in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.)
The Bureau of Land Management’s second offering of oil shale RD&D leases in Colorado and Utah has attracted considerably less interest than the first round did in 2005. Only 3 companies applied for leases under the revised rules announced by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. Among the applicants, however, is industry giant ExxonMobile, which made an unsuccessful bid during the previous offering to obtain a federal lease for developing and testing its Electrofrac in situ process. (Reported by Dennis Webb in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.)
Dr. Jeremy Boak, Director of the Center for Oil Shale Technology and Research at the Colorado School of Mines, recently cited What Every Westerner Should Know About Oil Shale as a model for reports on the controversial question of oil shale development. In an editorial for Colorado Energy News, Dr. Boak described our work as a “balanced, objective view of the history and potential future of oil shale in the U.S.” and suggested that it is one of the few available resources that provide an evenhanded assessment of oil shale’s promise and potential pitfalls.
At the 29th Oil Shale Symposium hosted by the Colorado School of Mines in the foothills of Golden, Colorado, officials from companies engaged in developing technology for oil shale extraction reported that their projects were making progress. Officials from Shell, Exxon, American Shale Oil (AMSO), the Oil Shale Exploration Company (OSEC), and Red Leaf Resources gave presentations detailing the state of their RD&D operations, which are being conducted on both public and private lands in Colorado’s Piceance Basin and Utah’s Uintah Basin. Notable for its absence among the presenters was Chevron, who holds one of the federal leases in the Piceance Basin.
Based in part on the new information shared at the symposium, we are working on revising What Every Westerner Should Know About Oil Shale to ensure that it continues to reflect the most up-to-date state of affairs in Shale Country. We expect the revised text to be ready later this fall. In the meantime, the Durango Herald ran an article from the Associated Press that discusses some of the announcements made at the symposium.
At a press conference today Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar announced the terms of a second round of RD&D leasing. The terms focus more specifically than the first round on protecting water resources, air quality, ecological resources, and the communities in Shale Country. Secretary Salazar also announced that he had asked the department’s Inspector General to investigate the rules - including royalty rates - announced in January 2009 in the final days of the Bush Administration. Although this is the second investigation into the Bush Administration’s actions in Shale Country, Salazar said that it will proceed independently from the recently-announced corruption probe into former Interior Secretary Gale Norton’s relationship with Shell during the leasing process.
By coincidence (presumably), the announcement was timed to coincide with a session entitled “Research, Development, and Demonstration Update” at the 29th Oil Shale Symposium at the Colorado School of Mines.
On the first day of the Oil Shale Symposium, officials from Colorado and Utah demonstrated notably different attitudes toward oil shale development in their states.
Robert Randall of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources explained that the state - which contains the richest deposits in Shale Country - has “serious questions” about how oil shale development may impact air, water, and ecological resources as well as communities in and around the Piceance Basin. Randall echoed many of the concerns outlined in the state’s letter to the Department of Interior asking for a “midterm review” of oil shale leases in May 2009. With so many of their concerns still unsatisfied, the Colorado government would prefer to wait for technologies to progress farther through the RD&D phase before making a decision about whether to go ahead development.
Alan Walker of Utah Science Technology and Research (USTAR), on the other hand, reiterated the state governor’s declaration at last year’s symposium that the oil shale industry is “very welcome” in Utah, where they will find a warm welcome from the highest officials in the state government to the individual citizens of local communities in Utah’s Shale Country.