Community | April 10, 2009 | 10 comments

Stop Reckless Development of the Dirtiest Fossil Fuel Ever

source: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/569543020?z00m=19755399

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stopnoise
Target: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar
Sponsored by: The Wilderness Society
At the tail end of the Bush administration, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) worked overtime to rush through "midnight" regulations - making huge tracts of public lands in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming available for commercial oil shale development with sweetheart terms and few environmental protections.

Using current technologies, commercial oil shale development would result in one of the dirtiest fossil fuels the world has ever seen. It would require an extraordinary amount of water and energy in order to turn the waxy kerogen embedded deep within the rock into a synthetic oil substitute. This highly polluting process literally bakes the rock at 500 to 1,000 degrees for more than a year just to liquefy and extract the synthetic crude.

Luckily, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is making efforts to overturn Bush administration policies, but he needs to know that his actions have full public support! Tell Secretary Salazar that you oppose reckless oil shale development.
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10 comments // Stop Reckless Development of the Dirtiest Fossil Fuel Ever

  • Wetdog
  • Sam_the_Wizer
  • Sam_the_Wizer
    • 0
      Sam_the_Wizer  

    • Oil companies in Western Colorado have been buying up water rights from the Colorado River to start extracting oil shale. This would have a huge impact on places like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles that depend on water from the Colorado. I'll see if I can find an article to cite...

    • 3 years ago
  • bombastinator
    • 0
      bombastinator  

    • Ras_menelik has it right.
      Without 100$ crude prices, oil shale is dead. Which means of course it will be back, but not for at least a while. I'm not sure how effective the "ban it quick while no one's looking" method is going to work though.

      I might point out though that since oil sand/shale is mostly Canadian. Any action on the United States part would do little for the environment either way. It would merely push the destruction farther north, and force us to buy the same high priced environmentally destructive oil from Canada, further weakening the US economy.

    • 3 years ago
  • Sam_the_Wizer
    • 0
      Sam_the_Wizer  
    • bombastinator:

      "The largest deposits in the world occur in the United States in the Green River basin, which covers portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming; about 70% of this resource lies on federally-owned or -managed land.[23] Deposits in the United States constitute 62% of world resources"

      That's according to the Wikipedia article on Oil Shale.

    • 3 years ago
  • bombastinator
  • ras_menelik
  • Wetdog
  • Sam_the_Wizer
    • 0
      Sam_the_Wizer  

    • I live right in the middle of Colorado's oil fields. They tried to develop oil shale in the 70s but bailed when they realized it wouldn't be profitable. I'm glad that Secretary Salazar is continuing to represent Western Colorado in Washington, even though he is no longer our representative.

    • 3 years ago
  • ras_menelik
    • 0
      ras_menelik  
    • Image

    • The good news is this is only profitable @ >$100.00 a barrel crude,If we the people stay away from fossil fuel abuse and ASAP switch to an alternative the shale extraction industry will DIE! & with it......Oil.

    • 3 years ago
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