There's no need to revisit oil shale debacle

Never.

Never in my lifetime will shale oil be a viable fuel resource. Been there, done that. I'm a survivor of the Colorado West Slope's boom and bust of the late 1970s and early 1980s. If an OPEC embargo didn't force the hand of the oil industry to start squeezing oil out of shale reserves, it's doubtful that current market conditions will either.

I'm reasonably assured that I'll be driving a car fueled by hydrogen or another alternative fuel before I'm filling up at the pump with gasoline extracted from oil shale deposits in Utah, Wyoming or Colorado. Every time the oil shale specter raises its head, as it has recently in the wake of record oil prices, I want to tell the industry spokesman to take a deep, cleansing breath until the feeling of "irrational exuberance" passes.

People in northwestern Colorado were cautiously optimistic about oil shale development in the 1970s. When Parachute, Colo., literally sprung up overnight, natural skepticism started to wane. After all, the federal government was providing millions of dollars in subsidies, and some companies even had federal contracts to buy the shale oil at about twice the going rate of crude oil. Thousands of jobs would be created. What could go wrong?

The short answer is, it didn't work. The plan was to mine the shale and heat it in massive ovens until kerogen, a waxy petroleum, could be extracted. The kerogen would be condensed and refined as gasoline, jet fuel or diesel fuel.

Despite massive amounts of corporate welfare and sky high optimism, no one was able to extract kerogen at a profit. Boom went bust and 2,500 people were out of work.

No surprise then, that talk of an oil shale revival is looked upon warily, even with advances in technology that would send an electrical current through the shale to essentially melt the kerogen out of the rock. It would then be pumped out using traditional oil extraction equipment. This is supposedly more environmentally friendly, because there's no mining or waste rock, although electrifying the shale would still use a lot of water and energy.

Oil shale development was billed as an answer to the United States' dependence on foreign oil. It clearly wasn't so, and thanks to a greater number of cars on the road and the return of the gas-guzzlers, Americans are more dependent on oil imports than ever. But unlike the 1970s, there's no oil shortage. It's more a personal finance shortage when you gas up your car.