As the international oil markets continue to fluctuate precipitously, surging to historic highs before plummeting to prices that haven't been seen in nearly a decade, frazzled consumers and their elected representatives have begun to view energy sources found close to home as a more reliable alternative to foreign suppliers. Interest in domestic unconventional fuels like oil shale has surged accordingly. The prospect of wringing billions of barrels of oil from these rocks is becoming a hot topic around the halls of government and the boardrooms of energy companies, not to mention the town halls of communities near the shale deposits and the meeting rooms of environmental organizations.
Fossil fuel resources like oil shale are considered unconventional in the sense that they are more difficult and more expensive to recover or produce than the free-flowing light crude oil that has been the industrialized world's main energy source for the past century. Therefore they have remained largely untapped. Among the United States' strategic unconventional fuel portfolio, oil shale is noteworthy because of the extraordinary size of the resource. The rich shale deposits on the Western Slope of the Rocky Mountains may contain the equivalent of 3 to 8 times more oil than all of Saudi Arabia's proven reserves. Boosters promote these tremendous domestic oil shale reserves as a key part of the solution to the twin problems of declining worldwide crude oil production and increasing US dependence on foreign energy suppliers.
This is not the first time that the Western Slope's oil shale fields have been promoted as an ace in the hole for national energy security. Twice in the twentieth century, the federal government encouraged mineral rushes intended to develop oil shale into a major energy resource. However, despite intense efforts, neither of these past booms unlocked the secret of turning oil shale into a viable commercial energy resource. Instead of establishing a new industry, both of these previous oil shale booms lead to excruciating busts that battered the communities of Shale Country, including a regionally devastating downturn in 1982.
Today it looks as though another oil shale development cycle is on the horizon, a prospect that local residents and concerned citizens throughout the nation regard with a mix of anticipation and apprehension. Energy companies are experimenting with a variety of new ways to unlock oil shale at public and privately owned sites throughout Shale Country. Like modern-day alchemists, they are looking for a way to turn rock into oil.