Red Leaf currently has access to more than 17,000 acres of state land in eastern Utah that Nelson described as "a lot of sage brush."

Alabama-based Oil Shale Exploration and its partners claim they now have or will have access to private and public land that will yield 2.7 billion barrels of oil. Both companies will soon be going after leases for a lot more oil shale on federal lands managed by the BLM.

Nelson said getting that federal land will lessen the footprint her company will have in Utah, because fewer access roads will need to be built if the companies can work with more contiguous state and federal land.

The water needed by Red Leaf and Oil Shale Exploration will be mostly for dust control on dirt roads their vehicles will be using, as well as water for workers and production. At full-scale commercial production in the Uintah Basin, estimated to come sometime after 2020, about 20,000 employees and their families who will depend on oil-shale operations for employment will need water.

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com