Comments about ‘Feds' new oil shale plan will keep activity off Western land’

Oil shale and tar sands do not need further study. Has been extensively studied for the past 50 years. It is time to encourage a small commercial scale operation or two,maybe two each in Utah and Colorado, where the best resources lie. Let's see if the resource can be produced and refined in an economical way. With oil at around $100 a barrel, it is time. Maybe we ought to wait until it reaches $200 a barrel, and we are paying $10 per gallon for gas....

Several companies have different technologies to try - let's give them the green light and see which technologies show the most promise. We will never know as long as we sit in the current posture of 'needs more study'.

BRAVO, Governoer Herbert for telling it like it really is!

This is just one more part of Obama's war on the West, his seeking to throw money to his "green" energy buddies who have failed dismally to actually deliver the fantasy schemes we taxpayers have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on.

Drill here, drill now!

"Oil shale contains kerogen, which must be subjected to temperatures of more than 750 degrees before it can produce oil. Studies have indicated up to about 500 gallons of water may be needed to produce one barrel of oil from it..."

A couple of years ago, the Wall Street Journal had an article on the process for melting the oil out of oil shale. Specifically, you have to freeze the perimeter of a field so that the process of cooking the interior of it to melt the oil out won't contaminate ground water. The amount of electric power to do the freezing, heating, and squeezing far exceeds the amount of oil energy you get.

Add water consumption to the mix (and don't forget, it takes even more water to make the electricity for the freezing, melting, and squeezing), and you've got yourself an uneconomical, net-negative source of energy.

You're better off putting solar panels on the land. No need for water. No need for power for freezing, heating, and squeezing. The panels would pay for themselves within 5 to 10 years. The landowner would get a royalty and the county would get property taxes out of it for at least forty years (life of the panels).

Your headline seems to be different than the story - "is to make 35,308 acres in Colorado, 252,181 acres in Utah, and 174,476 acres in Wyoming available for oil shale research. Also, 91,045 acres in eastern Utah would be available for activities related to tar sands."

I have no special knowledge, nor have I ever seen the area in Candaa where these resources are being produced there, BUT I have personally talked to people that have and the impacts may be great. The water seems to be a real problem when there are some concerns being expressed about there being enough to put an atomic plant at Green River.

It seems better to me to know what you are doing and understand the impacts and know what you are going to do rather than go ahead like a bull in a china closet. There seems to be some people who are knowledgable who have concerns. The process defined should help determin whether they are righ or wrong before causing problems that would be hard to cure,