Reader comments
Oil-shale 'rush' is sparking concern

Bush says we're addicted to oil, but what's the "cure" -- get more oil! We really need politicians who are going to make the hard, but necessary call to move our economy off oil. Oil, whether domestic or imported, is the currency of anti-Americanism in the world. Its internationally-set price creates profits to fund dictators and terrorists, and our continued dependence is hurting our economy, the dollar's value, trade imbalance, American lives in the unpopular Middle East wars, etc. While Detroit says fuel economy will simply hurt its auto industry, the Japanese are benefiting with skyrocketing hybrid sales, and even GM's Lutz said two days ago that GM's failure to jump on hybrid technology was its biggest misstake! The future is electric cars and renewable energy from America's rural communities. Why keep pouring money into oil to "keep" us addicted when the transistion away from it can bring so many benefits? Imagine if all the money we sent to Venezuela and the Middle East went to our rural communities for biofuels, wind, etc. -- think of the economic boom, jobs, national security, and energy security this would bring!

I am always amazed at how people who have never produced anything, are telling the successfull 'it can't be done, it won't work'. Developing oil shale has so many benefits I can't list them all. While concern for the environment has to be considered, It should not be a deciding factor.

Oil is over $100.00 per barrel and the amount of money we are sending out of the United States to import oil is driving the value of the dollar to deep lows. Like it or not, our infrastructure is still built around oil. It is a matter of economic national security to rapidly increase domestic oil production. This includes drilling in Alaska, off the coast of Florida, and procuring oil from new sources such as oil-shale and coal liquification. The United States is the Middle-East of coal and oil-shale, we should be developing these sources of oil as quickly as possible.

So these left wing hack conservationists don't want us to hurt some rocks and weeds in the middle of the desert. But guess what? These same left wing hack conservationists are the people who are freaking out about war in the middle east and hate George Bush and hated the first Gulf War. If we want to be free from the middle east we have to become energy dependent on ourselves. To do that we have to take advantage of the oil reserves we have in Alaska, Utah, and Wyoming. Why the heck do we want to "conserve" a bunch of ugly rocks and weeds in the middle of the frozen tundra? So that we can even become more dependent on the middle east? Left wing nuts like these conservationists have no clue about reality. They live in their little dream world denying reality. They want us to ride our bikes everywhere and use no oil. Well obviously thats not a realistic solution so we have to get oil from somewhere, why not right in our own country!

Wow, 'reality', I didn't know the technology was ready to go and only enviros stood in the way, that there is enough water and power out there for full scale production and everything was ready to go! thanks for the news! And to think all along I thought it was that the technology wasn't there yet to turn low grade kerogen into high grade gasoline. Thanks for the pat and simple answer! It's the libs, of course!

The pro 'use shale and tar sands' lobbyists are not looking ahead. These are non-renewable resources so what will happen when these are finished? That is if we are not destroyed by the destructive consequences of trying to use them.

There are technologies out there that have very little environmental footprint. The use of the in-situ process with heaters or microwaves are an attractive alternative to the pulverizing stone that these environmentalists are upset about. However, they don't understand that the cleaner way is also the cheaper way. It just goes to show that people will continue to make remarks without any regard to a topic without looking at all of the facts first.