Oil-shale 'rush' is sparking concern

With oil prices surpassing $100 per barrel, talk of extracting the black gold wherever it can be found in Utah and elsewhere is raising red flags for environmental groups.

The most recent complaint came this week from 26 conservation groups that accuse the Bush administration of rushing to develop oil shale and tar sands and endangering communities and 2 million acres of wild lands in three states, including Utah.

A letter Thursday to the Bureau of Land Management from 26 conservation groups — including the Sierra Club, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and The Wilderness Society — asserts that the public has yet to be informed of the social, economic and environmental impacts of commercial development of shale and sands.

"We need to focus our resources on supporting energy efficiency and renewable energy sources that are known to protect the environment and are economically sound," the groups wrote in their letter.

Even though any large-scale tar-sands and oil-shale development in Utah might be years away, the Utah-based Nine Mile Canyon Coalition already fears that oil projects in the proposed Argyle Canyon Special Tar Sands Areas would "leave vast areas of land sterile and ugly, use more water than is readily available in this arid region and would pollute both ground and surface water for many miles downstream."

The public comment period for the so-called Tar Sands/Oil Shale Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement was supposed to end Thursday, but the BLM announced that it will extend the period for another 30 days. This part of the process is being used to identify where leasing of government-owned land for sands and shale development might take place.

"I don't believe there's any way they can do it without total devastation," said Steve Tanner, chairman of Nine Mile Canyon's impact research committee.

Sand and shale development would involve drilling many holes and pumping hot water down them to release the trapped oil and then bringing the product back to the surface. Tanner said there isn't enough available water for that.

The development also could require removing mountain tops to reach the oil and would raise questions about where to store the leftover materials. "That's total destruction," he said.

Once a final environmental assessment is published, the Interior Secretary will meet with governors from Utah, Colorado and Wyoming to talk about whether there is sufficient interest and justification for moving forward with a leasing program, said Jim Kohler, chief of minerals for the BLM in Utah. He said rules would need to be established to govern leasing government land to drilling operations.

Kohler said predicting environmental impacts is premature. "Until you have a specific proposal in front of you," he said, "it's pretty hard to say what that development will look like."

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