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Will oil shale turn into a boon or environmental mess?

Mess.

Aside from the visual and enviornmental concerns what about the fire hazards of mining shale oil? Mining equipment, oil, and a spark could be disastrous combinations. Would this cause a fire that would burn forever? Just as there are coal mines still burning underground shale oil could be more easily a burning toxic mess. Using scarce desert water in massive amounts as a deterent to fire will contaminate this water unusable for who knows how long. Recycle it, I doubt that as cost effective, so where will it be stored? Last but not least, where will this oil go and what would it be used for? Shipping it out of the country and expected profiteering from it must be the objective to mine it. Until our government establishes that oil produced from american sources, including off shore, is not exportable or subject to world market oil prices, not costs to produce, we cannot allow indescriminate oil mining or drilling. The american people are being mislead, exporting all of the american oil supplies does not benefit the american people. Americas present oil production is put on the world market for export, not in our refineries and supplied to the american people.

Making Utah look like Alberta may be a dream of a lot of locals because it will look like Utah is doing something to address our oil mess, but in reality, it could be a major distraction from preparing for the "game changing" technologies right at our door -- namely, plug-in cars and batteries. With GM, Toyota, Nissan, and other major car companies (and new ones, such as Tesla) all planning to launch electric plug-ins or hybrid plug ins within the next two years (Teslas are already available!), energy investors and policy makers need to think if that expensive-to-produce and polluting oil shale in 2016 is going to be worth much. Impending restrictions on carbon emissions are likely to impose another high cost on the use of oil, and electricity is the future over other alternative (such as hydrogen) simply because it is already convenient, accessible to most drivers, and inexpensive (Utah electricity rate is about 8 cents per kilowatt hour, and a 40-mile recharge will take about 8 kilowatt hours of electricity -- yes do the math!). Hydrogen has no infrastructure yet and will likely be very expensive, and electric cars will likely delay hydrogen's feasibility.

I would like to hear a comparison of converting coal into oil vs oil shale production. We already have the coal mines going and, theoretically, there is ample supplies of that in Utah. Is one better than the other? Or are both equally difficult? It's hard to know what the best approach might be.

"'There's not even a dirty way of extracting oil from shale that's economically viable.” said Sierra Club's Mark Clemens.

In that case, there is nothing for Clemens to worry about.

If the oil companies are truly the rapaciously greedy, environmentally insensitive villains, so often portrayed by Mr. Clemens and many others, then wasting money on something that is not “economically viable”, is the last thing they would ever do. Surely, according to the perpetually projected stereotype, their only aim in life is to make as much money as possible.

Which begs the question, why then is Mr. Clemens so concerned, given his own argument?

Exporting oil does benefit Americans, if indeed that were to happen with this. Exporting brings money and wealth into our country.

Production -- even if it is exported -- increases supply which lowers prices.

To those who say this won't work because increased demand will offset increased production, just remember that if demand goes up anyway and production doesn't, we'll be even worse off in terms of prices than we are now.

And to those who say this won't be available for another ten years, just remember this oil problem isn't going to be solved by electric cars and conservation in the next couple of years either.

This is a long term problem that is going to require a lot of conservation, alternatives, and production.

If we listen to the enviros, then no development of any energy source should ever be allowed anywhere ever. That the world you want to live in?

With the ongoing lack of a coherent energy and budget policies, the reality of oil shale is "when" it will happen, not "if" it will happen. If oil shale escapes not being used for domestic oil needs because we have somehow created an energy policy that weans us off of oil in the next 20 years (unlikely), the government will eventually be forced to tap into oil shale in order to sell it to countries such as China so we can pay for our ongoing national account deficit. Our oil shale is literally a "Cibola" or city of (black) gold that Nicholas Cage was looking for on National Treasure 2.

The same people who say oils shale technology is years off say solar and wind are right around the coener. In reality they have been pushing solar and wind for thirty years. They will have a part of the answer but only a small part. To be energy independant we will need nuclear and fossil fuel for decades.

You all don't understand the economics an oil operation. Imagine a 2000 barrel per day operation -- a very small operation. It would generate $200,000 per day (at $100 per barrel), and $73 million per year. If Utah could get five of these operations going with each trying out different technologies, it would provide hundreds of jobs, gross revenues over $300 million, millions of dollars in mineral lease revenue and tax income to the state, and help address our energy appetite.

Let's stop talking and get to work!

I think the oil companies are going about this the wrong way. They should not be telling everyone they want to "extract oil" but that they want to "cleanup the oil mess".

Imagine if all that "dirty stinking oil" sitting in the ground was there because some company dumped it there as a way to get rid of some industrial byproduct. All the environmentalist would be screaming for the oil companies to come in and "clean it up". The superfund would be used to subsidize "cleanup operations" where the dirt would be carefully processed to remove any traces of that "industrial waste oil".

Instead of being painted the villains by all the environmentalists, the oil companies would be the "saviors of the environment" by offering to come in and take care of this "mess".

Oh, wait! That would only work if oil could only be broken down into harmless elements at a loss instead of being sold for a profit as a source of energy.

Mr. Clemens and his ilk typify the head-in-the-sand bumper sticker crowd that opposes anything and everything having to do with development of any kind. His comments and those of a couple of the posters here show the worst kind of fuzzy headed thinking: Condemn an idea, file suit, whether or not they know anything about the technology. (Of course, if they didn't ramp up the rhetoric they couldn't increase the fund raining.) Let's give the oil shale folks a chance to show what they can do before jumping on the condemnation bandwagon.

Bob G, The US produces about 7 million barrels of oil a day and uses about 18 million. It's true that a portion of US production may be exported where it makes economic sense, but the vast majority of oil produced in the US is consumed in the US.

Let the free enterprise system work (reduce government regulations) and watch prices drop and problems be solved.

What a lazy article.

Talk about oil shale. Get Utah Senators' reactions. Then contact the Sierra Club, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, and the Nine Mile Canyon Coalition and let them whine in their usual manner.

Finish with a concluding paragraph.

This issues is typical of the gut reaction difference between Democrats and Republicans (or more specifically between liberals and conservatives).

The gut reaction of Democrats is to be against everything, whether it's a good thing or not. The gut reaction of Republicans is to be for stuff, whether it's a good thing or not.

I don't think that the oil sands mines are a 'mess'. They're massive operations, energy and water hungry, with huge footprints. But that's the reality of extracting oil from the sand, and it's probably the reality of extracting it from rock. Check out the Syncrude or Suncor or Shell Albian Sands sites. They do work to conserve the environment. If we want energy from the shales, we need to be prepared for the reality of the operation. NIMBY won't work here.

I agree, Brad...a very lazy article.

So someone has actually figured out a way to make light sweet crude that can be converted to gasoline from kerogen shale? That's news... to even the oil companies!
Many Utahns would happily fill in the Grand Canyon and breathe thick black fog if it brought enough $10 an hour grunt jobs, so no environmental price would be too high for them and that's hardly a surprise.

Processing shale will require a gazillion gallons of water. We live in a desert. This is the first problem we need to solve.

Who cares about the environment?
We're all republicans in Utah so lets go ahead and make a mess, the complain in 20 years when the govenment hast to clean it up because the last thing we would do is require the oil companies to clean it.

Can't we get past the water issue? So some processes use a few gallons of water. Other oil shale technologies use none - nada.

No one seems to care that ethanol production requires five gallons or more of water per gallon of ethanol produced.

Let's give the oil shale companies a chance to try their technologies. It's time to let them show what they can do.