Plan targets West oil-shale research

The Bush administration moved Thursday to jump-start oil shale development in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming by offering research sites that could be converted to 5,100-acre production leases if companies prove they can turn rock into fuel.

The Bureau of Land Management announced it will accept proposals for 160-acre research projects on federal lands across 16,000 square miles in the three states until Sept. 7.

Plans to extract the oil would employ techniques ranging from strip mining to a new on-site heating technique being developed by Shell Oil Co. near Rangely, Colo.

"With the price of oil so high, we expect a pretty good mix of companies who want to try and tap one of our biggest petroleum resources," said Jim Edwards, chief of the Colorado BLM office's solid minerals branch.

Successful projects could result in 5,100-acre blocks of federal land opened to oil extraction for 35 years or more.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the United States has more than 50 percent of the world's deposits of oil shale.

Geologists say up to 1 trillion barrels of oil lie bound in the 1,000-foot thick shale formations of western Colorado and nearby areas of Utah and Wyoming, or roughly as much as the rest of the world's proven oil reserves combined.

Environmental groups pressed the BLM last fall to limit participation to companies developing new technologies.

"It doesn't sound like (a) research and development program if they're willing to accept techniques that were rejected 25 years ago," said Bob Randall of Western Resource Advocates.

Proposals will face environmental and technological analysis before 10-year research leases are awarded, Edwards said.

Another round of environmental reviews would be required before the agency awards 20-year production leases.

"If we don't believe a technology fits our environmental protection standards, we won't approve the lease," Edwards said.

The agency, however, has no plans to do a region-wide study on the cumulative impact of widespread oil shale development in the three states, he said.

Environmentalists say that the BLM has established no performance standards to judge the commercial applicability of research techniques.

They also are worried the agency will award production leases no matter how inefficient or dirty the project.