Hatch, Bishop pitch oil shale development to legislators

For the second time in two months, Sen. Orrin Hatch was at the state Capitol stumping for the development of Utah's oil shale.

Utah Republicans Hatch and Rep. Rob Bishop appeared in front of the state Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Interim Committee Wednesday to talk about how progress of shale development is being held up by "liberals" in Washington, lawsuits by environmental groups and a moratorium on leasing federal land for shale development.

It is estimated that there is about 800 billion recoverable barrels of oil locked in shale under the Green River formation, which is in portions of Utah, Wyoming and Colorado.

Hatch said the trend since 2000 shows that there has been an increase of 100 percent in the number of applications for permits to drill, permits granted by the Bureau of Land management and wells completed, while "environmentalist protests" are up 700 percent in that time. He based the drilling figures on data collected from a Utah BLM office in Vernal. Hatch said the current climate allows for any "wacko" to file a lawsuit and hold up energy development projects.

"A common argument used by extremists against oil shale production is that it would take 10 to 15 years to get to commercial production, so we should not allow it to start," Hatch said. "Another argument has been that oil shale development is probably not economic, so we should never let companies even have a go at it. Both arguments are based on fallacious circular logic, but the media continues to print them as though they make perfect sense."

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, with less than half of its members from Utah, has five pending lawsuits concerning energy development issues in Utah. SUWA's Stephen Bloch said his group and others are bringing "targeted" litigation as a last resort to "block Bush administration decisions that are allowing for energy development in some of the West's last remaining special places." He called Hatch's "wacko" allegation unfounded, adding that over the past eight years SUWA's lawsuits in federal court over drilling permits have involved a small fraction of the total approved permits.

Hatch also said Democratic leadership in Congress has adopted an agenda of the "extreme anti-oil movement" as their own energy policy. Hatch said the time to develop shale is now, partly because oil companies no longer have the spare capacity to flood the market and roll oil prices back to 25 years ago.