House Speaker John Boehner recently outlined a plan to put more Americans to work and improve the nation’s crumbling transportation infrastructure. It’s called the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act.
To pay for it, Boehner would rely on increased royalties collected from domestic energy production. And the speaker’s website touts the bill’s inclusion of legislation by Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs, that is aimed at speeding up the commercial production of oil shale.
We have argued before that bringing some certainty to oil shale development on federal lands is important, as a variety of companies push forward with new and promising technology. A portion of Lamborn’s bill makes sense, in that regard.
However, too often Washington politicians are able to convince themselves and others that commercial oil shale development is just around the corner, and with it, vast new sums of money for the federal treasury.
But the companies involved in the research and development of new oil shale technology don’t make that claim. With a few exceptions, they talk of a decade or more before oil shale can be developed commercially.
On top of that, Lamborn’s bill would allow the Department of Energy to temporarily cut royalty and other payments that might eventually come from commercial oil shale development, thus cutting money that would go to the federal government.
At such time as oil shale becomes commercially viable, it won’t need royalty exemptions to make it go. Until that occurs, Washington pols should stop trying to convince the public that commercial oil shale production is going to occur any time soon.
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