Hatch, Bennett and the company officials Tuesday pointed to oil prices that have pushed past $140 per barrel and gas prices nationally that are above $4 a gallon and rising. Alternative fuel technologies, such as ethanol, aren't enough to ease everyone's short-term financial pain, they said.

James Bunger, an Department of Energy consultant and president of Energy Technology & Engineering, said that the United States needs to show the market that it is serious about supplying more of the country's domestic energy needs, which would have a "moderating effect" on prices. One speaker after another said the technology to develop shale and tar sands has improved and experiments on Utah's state lands have already shown the latest methods work well.

But environmentalists questioned whether costly oil-shale retrieval would bring a net economic benefit and warned of dangers to land and water resources and to archaeological treasures.

"I don't think we're ready to go after oil shale," said Steve Tanner, a member of the Nine Mile Canyon Coalition, who made his career in mining. "I think it takes more energy to develop it than it's going to yield. We don't have the water resources."

Citing one method of removal, Tanner said it would take more hot water than people think to heat up the oil enough to move it out of the rock. "There's no way to predict how much heat it's going to take to move it," he said in an interview Tuesday.

Hatch disagreed, saying Utah has enough water to aid in shale development, which he said doesn't require as much water as previously thought.

"We're fully capable of providing enough water to do that," Hatch said. "And we'd be stupid not to."

But Tanner said that mining tar sands with methods like those used in Canada would result in "total devastation" of the environment. "Everything that's left is dead," he said. Truck traffic needed to transport oil out of the Nine Mile Canyon area also threatens the fragile rock art there.

Getting oil from shale is a "pipe dream," Tanner said, and everyone, including Washington politicos, should focus on conservation and limiting the amount of petroleum-based products they use, he added.

Hatch acknowledged that shale and sands operations would affect the environment, but he said that companies would be required to reclaim areas they have impacted.

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com