GOP bills aimed at oil-shale use

WASHINGTON — House and Senate Republicans picked up on President Bush's request to open up oil shale exploration in Utah and other domestic oil production options with two bills introduced Thursday.

Each bill would remove the existing ban on the Interior Department from finalizing regulations to allow oil shale exploration on public lands. It would be a means to encourage companies to seek out producing oil in the West.

In a speech from the White House Rose Garden last week, Bush challenged House and Senate Democrats to approve a proposal that would increase domestic production to help reduce gas prices as well as the country's dependence on a foreign energy supply, including developing oil shale.

Although Bush touted it as an immediate solution to gas price increases, opponents such as the Wilderness Society have cautioned that it is not a short-term solution, and the long-term problems may be worse than any benefits.

The Senate Republicans introduced the Gas Price Reduction Act of 2008, which also calls for oil exploration in the outer continental shelf, increase federal money for plug-in cars and increased staff for the Commodities Future Trading Commission.

"Our bill can be summed up in four words: 'Find more, use less,'" said Sen. Alexander Lamar, R-Tenn., at a press conference Thursday with 20 Republican Senators, including Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah.

Part of the "find more" concept includes looking at oil shale resources. Bennett pointed out that the moratorium barring the Interior Department from finishing the rules of oil exploration on public lands puts the resource off the table for domestic production.

"Nobody is going to play a game in which there are no rules," Bennett said. "So by effectively preventing the drawing up of the rules for the leasing process they have made sure that there will be no exploration on federal lands with respect to oil shale."

Bennett said Utah has a pilot project moving forward on state land that could prove as early as later this summer how technology works to produce oil shale.

"There are over two trillion barrels potentially available for oil shale," Bennett said. "Even if you narrow that down to what is technically available using present technology, and not anticipating any further progress in technology, there are 800 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil in eastern Utah, western Colorado, and southern Wyoming. It's time we get going on that. It's there for the taking, we need to take it."