Sodium bicarbonate is used in many household products, including baking powder, baking soda, toothpaste, animal feed, pharmaceutical products, and several industrial processes. The product is mined from deposits of nahcolite and transported to the factory, where it is refined into a powder form and shipped out. Natural Soda’s deposits of nahcolite lie adjacent to deposits of oil shale and the company has also started efforts to mine oil shale.  The Bureau of Land Management leased 160 acres of land to Natural Soda to experimentally develop oil shale last December and the company has been moving forward on their efforts to mine oil shale.

The company has previously stated that they plan on mining oil shale far below aquifer levels in order to avoid groundwater contamination. If the company is capable of proving to the Bureau of Land Management that they can produce oil shale environmentally and economically responsibly, then the BLM will grant them a commercial lease to being selling their product and expand the size of their lease.

Warneke told the Glenwood Springs Post Independent that Natural Soda plans to draft their plans for an oil shale facility and submit them to the BLM by the end of the year, with hopes of starting construction on the plant in 2014. The company does not plan for the oil shale project to be nearly the size of their sodium bicarbonate expansion.

Jason Kieth, author of The Deseret News editorial, argues that the DOI’s research-based approach to oil shale is the most sensible considering the impacts that the industry will have on Utah’s land, water, and economy. Kieth argues that “the research it [the BLM's Oil Shale and Tar Sands Environmental Impact Statement] requires, regarding economic feasibility and environmental responsibility, provides protection for resources that currently support stable, long-term economies and healthy communities.” Kieth also argues that the new plan goes a long ways towards protecting Utah’s outdoor recreation and tourism industry, which would have lost millions of acres of land to oil shale development had the Bush-era oil shale plan remained in place. Kieth is a representative of several outdoor recreation groups, including the Access Fund and Outdoor Alliance.

Erika Pollard also spoke in support of the research-based oil shale plan in her Salt Lake Tribune editorial, arguing that the plan is “a smart-rethinking” of the Bush-era decision and the “reasoned and research-based approach to oil shale development” is what Utah needs. Pollard also argues that the tourism industry is already established in Utah and should not be risked for the sake of an unproven oil shale industry. Pollard is the Southwest Regional Manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, who work to protect the nation’s national parks.

The new approach to oil shale under Secretary Salazar is focused on research first. The Department of the Interior wants to make less land available for leasing and offer RD&D leases to ensure that the oil shale industry proves that oil shale is both environmentally and economically viable before opening public lands to the companies. The Department of the Interior has said that if oil shale companies prove their technology, then they will make more land available for commercial oil shale leasing.

“This plan maintains a strong focus on research and development to promote new technologies that may eventually lead to safe and responsible commercial development of these domestic energy resources,” Secretary Salazar said. “It will help ensure that we acquire critically important information about these technologies and their potential effects on the landscape, especially our scarce water resources in the West.” Water is an important issue with oil shale since most of the development will take place in arid areas and significant amounts of water is necessary to produce oil shale.

The research first approach is popular amongst farmers, sportsmen, environmentalists, and some western water advocacy groups. The Rocky Mountain Farmers Union praised the approach, saying the plan “protects our farms and our food” and the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance supports the stance because they believe that oil shale is far too dangerous for the natural environment to pursue.

Industry advocates, meanwhile, claim that the plan does not open up enough land or the best land for oil shale development and that there are too many loop holes for the industry to jump through in order to make oil shale work. Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of governmental and public affairs at the Western Energy Alliance, said that, “it’s more of the restrictive energy policies that we’ve seen out of this administration the last four years.” U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo) also criticized the administration in a prepared statement, saying that if the (Obama) Administration “is serious about creating jobs and increasing American energy production, they will scrap this plan and instead fully support producing our oil shale resources.” Nationally, the United States is producing more domestic oil and gas than at any time in the last two decades and domestic production has risen each of the last four years. Foreign imports of oil are at their lowest point since 1988, according to the Department of the Interior press release.

The revisions to oil shale rules are available for public commenting for the next 60 days. Anybody interested in viewing or commenting on the new regulations can do so here.

Denver City Council resolutions are rarely controversial and almost always unanimous, but the council’s oil shale decision came after an hour-long debate with two members voting against the measure and two abstaining.

City council member Charlie Brown believes that the proclamation could further divide Denver and the Western Slope. Denver and the Western Slope have a long history of schisms over water issues sine the city diverts water across the Continental Divide that would otherwise naturally flow to the Western Slope. Brown voted against the resolution.

“My concern is this policy and document will increase the rift between the Western Slope and Denver,” Brown said.

The recent decision by the BLM to take a more cautious approach to oil shale has been controversial. Several environmental groups attacked the decision because any industry support could threaten Western water supplies and would release greenhouse gases. Several Western Slope communities protested the BLM’s decision because they argue the decision was based on old scientific data and that the potential boost to the economy would far outweigh the environmental problems.

The controversial proclamation did not receive the support of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock or from Denver Water. Video of the final City Council discussion of this proclamation, including statements by a wide spectrum of stakeholders, is available for viewing through the Denver Channel 8 website. At the outset of the meeting, Prof. Jerry Boak of the Center for Oil Shale Technology and Research at the Colorado School of Mines gives a presentation the provides a good overview of technical aspects of potential oil shale development in Colorado, with an extended discussion around water use. For more on the BLM’s new approach to oil shale, read this blog post.

Commissioners from Garfield County unanimously decided to file a protest with the BLM because the recently passed Oil Shale and Tar Sands Final Environment Impact Statement (FEIS) will limit the amount of land made available for oil shale leasing–a move that the commissioners believe is based off of outdated scientific information.

The 2012 Oil Shale and Tar Sands FEIS makes 26,000 acres of Colorado public land available for oil shale development. The 2008 Bush-era plan made over 360,000 acres of Colorado land available. The FEIS cited threats to scarce water resources in the region, potential aquifer contamination, and greenhouse emissions as environmental concerns with oil shale. The commissioners from Garfield County, meanwhile, argue that the plan is based on old information that does not account for advances in oil shale technology that are less water-intensive and cleaner burning. (Click here and here for several companies claims to new, more efficient technologies.) The protest claims the plan violates the 2005 Energy Policy Act which calls for expanded resource extraction and also includes a Request for Information Quality Act Review to include the newer technologies that oil shale companies are working on.

A coalition of environmental groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, The Grand Canyon Trust, Living Rivers, and the Sierra Club sent a protest to the BLM because they feel that the 800,000 acres of Western public lands that the plan opens for oil shale activity is too much. The protest cites the environmental concerns that the commissioners believe are outdated as reasoning for not opening up any public lands for oil shale activity. According to the protest, the plan will release “intensive greenhouse gas emissions, hasten Colorado River drying, threaten wildlife and increase local and regional air pollution.”

“The climate crisis is worsening every day. The last thing we need is to destroy our public lands for carbon-intensive oil shale and tar-sands mining,” said Taylor McKinnon, public lands campaigns director with the Center for Biological Diversity, reports The Salt Lake Tribune.

The opposing complaints expressed by the county commissioners and environmentalists highlight the difficulty of finding common ground in the ongoing debate over oil shale. The economic potential of the resource is vast but an environmental and economically feasibly method to extract the resource has yet to be developed. The county commissioners believe that the BLM and Department of Interior’s current plan suffocates the industry’s ability to develop the resource. For the commissioners and other proponents of the industry the current plan does not allow the industry enough land and opportunities to discover environmental and economically sustainable methods.

“The reason we need to have more land available for leasing is so we don’t have that boom and bust,” Garfield County Commissioner Tom Jankovsky told The Aspen Times. “If nothing’s done, what happens is there will be some sort of emergency, the flood-gates will open on oil shale, and we’ll be the sacrificial lamb here in western Colorado.”

For opponents of the industry, the potential environmental impacts are too steep and given the boom-and-bust history of oil shale, the potential economic benefits may not be that good. Even though the BLM decided to significantly scale back the lands made available for oil shale (cutting nearly 1.6 million acres of land from the 2008 plan) and limiting the leases to research rather than commercial, the Center for Biological Diversity’s protest claims that the industry can not work at any level and no lands should be made available to the industry. (Click here for a link to the Center for Biological Diversity’s press release and a link to the protest letter.)

The public comment period for the FEIS ended last week and it is not certain that either protest will change the Department of the Interior’s final decision on oil shale.

Estonia is currently the only nation in the world that relies extensively on oil shale for electricity production. The small Baltic nation with a fast-growing economy hopes to move towards more renewable energy options in the next few decades but will continue to rely on oil shale for the majority of their oil shale production in the short term.

To read the entire Bloomberg Businessweek article click here.

The IEA, a Paris-based agency providing energy policy analysis, projects that the US will become “all but self-sufficient” in energy within the next twenty-years. “North America is at the forefront of a sweeping transformation in oil and gas production that will affect all regions of the world, yet the potential also exists for a similarly transformative shift in global energy efficiency,” said Maria van der Hoeven, IEA’s Executive Director.

Although global demand is expected to grow between 35 and 46 percent from 2010 to 2035, the United States oil consumption dropped to 18.9 million barrels a day last year and the IEA projects the downward trend to continue for the next few decades. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the US’s traditional source for fossil fuel energy, will increasingly turn towards growing Asian markets as the US becomes more self-sufficient.

The IEA projects the US to become a net-exporter of oil by 2030. Increased natural gas supplies from the shale-gas boom, substantial government subsidies, and improved industry practices have all aided in the substantial shift in domestic energy production.

For Westerners and for those who are interested in oil shale, the IEA report is more of a mixed bag than it sounds for the country as a whole. National energy self-sufficiency and increased oil production does not mean lower prices at the fuel pump. Fuel prices are set by the global market, and with increased global consumption in the coming decades prices are likely to continue rising or, at best, remain stagnant.

The US’s improved energy policy could also spell trouble for the oil shale industry. Oil shale historically looks more attractive to policymakers and energy developers at times when energy sources are threatened and fuel prices spike. With the nation turning to domestic fuel sources such as natural gas, which the US currently has a glut of due to the use of the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing (”fracking”), the urgency for oil shale development may seem diminished.

The re-elected Obama Administration has also signalled that it will continue to fund green energy and take measures to reduce carbon emissions nationwide in efforts to reduce climate change and increase efficiency. In such an environment, oil shale, a water intensive fossil fuel with numerous other environmental concerns, may struggle to find a competitive market.

Read more on the report and the worldwide impact from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

Following thousands of pages of public comments, the BLM chose to reduce the amount of land made available to the oil shale industry in large part because of environmental concerns over the yet unproven industry. Environmental groups raised concerns about the opening and exploitation of public lands and concerns about how much water the industry would use. Several big-game hunting associations also raised concerns about the impact of the industry on hunting and outdoor recreation.

A coalition of environmental groups filed suit against the previous plan, made under the waning days of the Bush Administration, which had opened nearly 2 million acres of land for commercial oil shale development. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar (D) agreed to take a “fresh-look” at oil shale following the settlement. Alternative 2(b), the plan ultimately chosen by the BLM, had been their preferred alternative from the beginning.

We will have more on what the new PEIS means for Westerners in the coming weeks, as well as reaction from the oil shale industry and environmentalists. To read the Final Environmental  Impact statement, visit http://ostseis.anl.gov/documents/peis2012/.

Nevada state lawmakers Peggy Pierce and Tick Segerblom along with Arizona House Minority Whip Leader Anna Toyar and Arizona Corporate Commission member Paul Newmen sent a letter telling Sec. Salazar that “we believe that a comprehensive study of the cumulative impacts of oil shale development to the Colorado River basin should be conducted before the BLM considers commercial leasing of  public lands.” The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is currently in the final stages of deciding how much public land in the West will be opened to oil shale development.

Several organizations, including Club 20 and the Colorado River Conservation District, are promoting the merits of the oil shale industry and want to quell fears that many residents and politicians have about the industry. Club 20, a coalition of leaders representing Western Colorado, supports the 2008 Bush-era plan to open up nearly 2 million acres of oil shale land because it “established a reasonable and thoughtful approach to the development of Oil Shale resources in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah,” according to their press release.

Club 20’s stance has been criticized by some because it may have emerged form a mid-October press event that touted the 2008 plan. The event, sponsored by the Environmentally Conscious Consumers of Oil Shale, also included the Grand Junction Chamber of Commerce, who also supports the 2008 plan. A coalition of environmental groups filed suit against the 2008 plan and the Bureau of Land Management is currently working on a new Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS). The preferred alternative in the 2012 PEIS would drastically reduce the amount of land made available to commercial oil shale leasing.

Continue reading to hear from opponents of oil shale development as well as a company who claims to be ready to produce within the decade.

While opponents to oil shale call the resource a “Stone Age Fuel” that carries potentially devastating environmental impacts, especially to Western water, advocates for the resource claim that more research and development is needed to truly understand the potential. Jeremy Boak, leader of the Oil Shale Symposium held annually at Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado, believes that the 2012 PEIS is “punitive” and is designed to punish rather than promote the industry, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports.

While communities and organizations are debating the merits of a potential oil shale industry, one company is moving ahead on their commercial lease to begin developing oil from shale. Enefit American Oil, an Estonian owned company, is prepared to produce 25,000 barrels of oil a day from their private commercial lease in Uintah County. Enefit plans to heat the shale below ground to release the hydrocarbons and then collect the kerogen in an above ground retort. The operation should be online by 2020, according to the company’s chief executive officer.

If Enefit is able to produce oil from shale on their private lease economically and without water waste and or contamination then supporters of the industry will have a stronger argument for opening up more Western lands for oil shale development. However, Obama has set a December 31 deadline for the 2012 PEIS and companies will likely have to remain on the lands that they already have for research and development.