Utahn aims to unlock oil shale

Locked in shale deposits on acres of eastern Utah's high-plain desert are thousands of barrels of coveted oil.

The problem is nobody seems to know how to get it out at a reasonable price.

That is, not until now.

A Utah man says he can develop oil shale for less than $15 a barrel, while current oil prices have been sitting at more than $40 a barrel.

"They say it's impossible to do it," said Leon Smith of Lindon. "Nothing's impossible."

Smith says he can produce up to 12,000 barrels of oil a day using his patent-protected process of extracting oil from shale.

Utah is rich in oil, yet it is still undeveloped. The Green River Formation, a geologic swatch stretching into Utah, Colorado and Wyoming, contains an estimated 1.5 trillion barrels of oil, according to the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

If Smith can get a major oil company to listen and invest in his oil-extraction process, he said he will create 250 full-time jobs in the Vernal area.

Smith met last week with oil executives and government officials, including Tony Dammer, director of naval petroleum and oil shale reserves for the Department of Energy.

But some officials who were at the meeting aren't as optimistic as Smith about the development of oil shale.

"We don't want to say anything that suggests we're negative to Mr. Smith's idea, but the reality of the situation is leasing federal oil shale land at this point in time is a little more than problematic, because we don't have the authority to do that," said Jim Kohler, minerals chief for the BLM's Utah office.

Kohler said Interior Secretary Gale Norton must come up with regulations on leasing oil shale land before anything can happen. A task force, which Kohler sits on, is mulling over possible recommendations.

"There is really nothing we can say about where the Department of Interior will be with oil shale development in the near future, other than it is being considered by the department and recommendations should be forthcoming in the near term," Kohler said. "If Mr. Smith can convince the secretary to do something about it, we wish him well."

The key to Smith's idea is hybrid technology.

Similar to hybrid cars, which use both electricity and gas for fuel, Smith's oil extraction method uses two technologies, coal and a rotary kiln.