Oil shale isn't a quick fix.

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The BLM is currently accepting comments from the public regarding the proposed regulations for oil shale development. Use the talking points below to help you craft your comments.

This is a critical opportunity for you to comment on this proposal and ensure strong protections for Colorado's water, air, and wildlife. Our western communities have been burned several times in the past with grand visions of oil shale development…this time, let's go slow and make sure we put our health, economies, wildlife and quality of life before big industry profits. As high fuel prices affect more people each day, some politicians  in Washington would like us to believe oil shale is the answer to curb our rising fuel costs. Yet even industry leaders and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) admit that oil shale development is decades away.

Talking Points

• These proposed leasing regulations, if adopted, would neither ensure protection of the environment nor guarantee a fair return to the federal treasury. 
  
  
• The proposed rule is based on inadequate information and incomplete environmental analysis, and is fundamentally premature. 
  
  
• It is a waste of taxpayer dollars to spend agency budgets on developing regulations for an industry that does not know what technologies it will use or what the impacts will be.
  
  
• New technologies are decades away from commercialization, and as the BLM stated in the DPEIS, "the lack of information about specific technologies and their impacts caused BLM's analysis to be too speculative at this time to support a decision to issue any leases." 
  
  
• Determining royalty rates, diligence requirements and other elements of leasing regulations without a proven technology is bad for the taxpayer. 
  
  
• Given the controversy surrounding offshore royalty rates in recent years, the Administration must know what it is regulating before it adopts leasing regulations. 
  
  
• With low royalty rates and the likely impacts on climate, the proposed rules would serve to subsidize global warming. 
  
  
• Finally, with a current moratorium prohibiting the BLM from finalizing these regulations until the last months of the Bush Presidency, it appears the BLM is seeking to rush publication of the rules instead of working with Congress on a schedule that supports development of rules that are technically and legally sound. 
  
  
• The proposed rule should be withdrawn.

» Take action now!