Energy bill could mean oil riches for area

WASHINGTON — A massive energy bill passed Tuesday by the U.S. Senate could eventually bring oil riches to eastern Utah, western Colorado and southwestern Wyoming.

Whether that happens in two years or 20 or at all will take more than an act of Congress, where the bill now moves for consideration.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 includes a provision introduced earlier this year by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and cosponsored by Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, that will authorize a program to accelerate development of oil shale and tar sand in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming — home to half the world's oil shale resources or an estimated 2.6 trillion barrels of oil.

The act also authorizes the Bureau of Land Management to lease land for the commercial development of the resources and to create a task force to grease commercial development.

Despite language to accelerate development, the legislation stops short of putting the effort on a fast track: An amendment negotiated by Hatch and Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., was sought by conservationists worried that rushing into things sets up the region for another boom-and-bust economic cycle.

"Oil shale is a huge unknown in our energy future, and we should not rush into it," said Steve Smith of The Wilderness Society, noting that the technology used in retrieving oil from shale and tar sands is "expensive and unproven."

Bob Randall of Western Resource Advocates also praised the compromise, saying the technology was not yet in place to begin commercial production within the next year and a half. "We don't even know the results of experimental research yet, and pushing development that fast would have spelled another boom-bust disaster," he said.

Hatch said negotiations with Salazar created a broader consensus in the Senate for the oil shale legislation, and he predicted the House-Senate conference committee will actually accelerate the oil shale and tar sands beyond what the Senate proposed.

"I think the House will expand it," he said. "It is starting to dawn on people we have some real resources there. We are the Saudi Arabia of oil," noting that "if we go full blast and get the bureaucracy off its duff, we can be up and running in five years."

The amendment sets up an oil shale task force to study the fuel's potential and requires a comprehensive environmental impact statement on how oil shale might be developed on federal public lands.