Public News Service
November 18, 2011, Lori Abbott

It's been called a fuel for the future, but opponents of oil shale development in western Colorado, Wyoming and Utah say it's more like "fools gold."

A congressional hearing today is to review the policies which guide leasing public lands and collecting royalties. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., has introduced legislation that would give developers access to more land for extracting oil from the kerogen rocks. Opponents say the industry should prove that the rocks can be transformed into fuel before getting additional subsidies and land deals from Congress.

Bill Eikenberry, a Wyoming rancher and former associate state director for the Bureau of Land Management, believes extracting from oil shale isn't practical.

"Never happened and it's never going to happen. There's just too many things out there that's not going to work from an economic standpoint, from an environmental standpoint and a social economic standpoint."

Industry leaders say it will be 15 years or more before they can develop a viable technology. Eikenberry says that's the same thing he heard when he started working for the Bureau of Land Management more than 40 years ago.

After a century of trying, Eikenberry says, oil developers have been unable to commercially produce fuel from the kerogen rocks. Most experts say it would take huge amounts of energy, water and time to melt the rocks in order to get a liquid fuel.

"It's been true for the last 100 years that it's going to cost more energy to produce oil shale than the energy you get out of oil shale."

Oil shale is too risky, Eikenberry says, adding that we shouldn't put our land and water at risk - and risk losing real jobs in agriculture, tourism and outdoor recreation - all so we can gamble away our public lands for oil shale speculation.