Delay on oil shale prudent

It takes significant amounts of energy and water to squeeze oil from oil shale. The Western Colorado Congress, a nonprofit group based in Grand Junction, Colo., estimates that 10 power plants would be needed to produce 2 million barrels of shale oil a day, should Colorado's reserves be fully developed. Other estimates suggest that two barrels of water are needed to produce one barrel of shale oil.

Yet some people paint the oil-shale reserves in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming as a solution to the economic and political problems that stem from the United States' dependence on the world oil market. Despite hundreds of millions spent on its development in the early 1980s, oil shale remains an unproven resource.

So it was prudent that the U.S. House passed an amendment this week that effectively stalls oil-shale development until more is known about its environmental impacts. Considering the environmental, economic and health issues tied to large-scale development of this resource, further study is indeed warranted.

Utah Republican Reps. Chris Cannon and Rob Bishop decried the House vote on an amendment to the Interior Appropriations spending bill, which prohibits the issuance of further permits on federal lands until an in-depth study is completed. Instead of castigating the environmental lobby, the representatives should take a broader view of the issue. No doubt, mining or oil-shale extraction efforts would help fill public school coffers with royalty monies. But at what cost? Industry officials admit that oil-shale extraction is "energy intensive," meaning significant amounts of energy are expended to extract shale oil, let alone refine it. That would mean a need for more electricity from coal-fired power plants or the construction of more power plants. That means more pollution.

Shell Frontier Oil and Gas Inc., which holds oil-shale leases in Colorado and Utah, announced earlier this month that it is attempting to refine its extraction process at a private test site in western Colorado. Meanwhile, it has postponed its plans to work on experimental oil-shale operations on federal lands.

Could it be that recovering shale oil is not commercially viable? That proved to be true in the oil-shale boom and bust of the early 1980s. On May 2, 1982, oil prices plummeted and government subsidies for oil-shale development dried up in Colorado. That day, known as "Black Sunday," remains a cautionary tale.

This amendment does not mean that oil-shale development is dead. It does extend hope that if the extraction of shale oil is economically feasible, any development of the resource is achieved with the least environmental impact possible. Taking time to conduct a thorough study of these issues makes sense.