The leaders of a northwest Colorado county atop one of the world's largest oil shale reserves passed a formal resolution yesterday chastising an Obama administration proposal dramatically cutting the amount of public land available for research and development.

The Garfield County Commission unanimously approved the six-page resolution, which brushes aside critics of the largely experimental process of extracting crude from shale rock, arguing instead that oil shale technology "has been proven beyond a doubt," and that failure to develop this resource deprives the region of a significant economic development opportunity.

Garfield County is believed to be the first county with known oil shale reserves to pass such a resolution, though activists say county leaders in as many as 10 other counties in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming are considering similar motions.

The county resolution comes two months after the Bureau of Land Management unveiled a draft programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) with a "preferred alternative" that would significantly downsize a George W. Bush administration plan to develop oil shale.

The Bush plan amended resource management plans in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming to make roughly 1.9 million acres of public land available for commercial oil shale development. BLM's proposal, however, would reduce available lands for oil shale development in the three states by more than 75 percent and would allow research on the leases only until industry demonstrates that commercial development is technically viable and environmentally safe (Greenwire, Feb. 3).

Industry groups have consistently asserted that the 2008 plan provides an excellent blueprint to encourage development of oil shale and tar sands resources without compromising environmental health and safety. And House Republicans are pushing a bill by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) that would turn the Bush plan into law (Greenwire, Feb. 1).

The Garfield County resolution mirrors many of those arguments, demanding that BLM "immediately cease and desist all activities related" to development of the PEIS and adopt the 2008 plan.

The resolution notes that the Bush plan included the input of state governors and other stakeholders as required by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, while the draft PEIS "entirely ignores the input of the task force and stakeholders which the 2005 Energy Policy Act directed the BLM to honor and follow." The result is that the draft PEIS "threatens to arbitrarily undermine the process ... and essentially dismantle a reasonable and rational oil shale and tar sands program" in violation of the act, according to the resolution.

The Garfield County resolution also notes that "the development and production of oil from oil shale has been proven beyond a doubt to be technologically and economically feasible," adding that it "requires little to no consumption of water, contrary to the myths which falsely claim that oil shale extraction requires large consumption of water resources."

The critics respond

Environmentalists have a much different view of the issue.

They ripped the Garfield County resolution, accusing the commissioners of political grandstanding on an important issue that, if not handled carefully, could result in widespread environmental damage.

Ken Neubecker, the executive director of Carbondale, Colo.-based Western Rivers Institute, said the commission's resolution "is a masterpiece of inaccuracies and political statements."

"It makes outrageous claims about proven and economically feasible technologies, about little to no water use, and it makes some flat-out political statements that are inappropriate," said Neubecker, who addressed the commission yesterday before it voted to approve the resolution. "I'm sorry, but it looks like it was written by somebody from the industry sitting in an office in Houston. I was disturbed by the wording."

Kate Zimmerman, the National Wildlife Federation's senior policy adviser on public lands, challenged the county resolution's claim that oil shale recovery is technologically feasible and environmentally safe.

"We still don't have an economically viable technology in place," Zimmerman said in a statement yesterday. "The most conservative estimates project that producing the oil will take large volumes of water and a lot of energy."

Environmentalists have long argued that the 2008 Bush plan failed to allow formal public protests and neglected to consider a range of alternatives exploring impacts to pristine lands and important wildlife habitat.

BLM's preferred alternative in the draft PEIS lays out "a cautious approach, and we think that's the way to move forward with oil shale," said Brad Powell, Western energy director for Trout Unlimited.

Powell said as many as 10 counties in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah could pass similar resolutions. County leaders in the three states met in private in Vernal, Utah, last month to discuss strategies to respond to the draft PEIS, according to press reports.

"I'm dismayed why anyone would be opposed to a go-slow approach, especially with the uncertainty we have in terms of water quantity and quality and other impacts," Powell said. "It's just prudent to proceed slowly in a cautious and scientifically balanced manner. That just seems like a logical approach to me."

Huge potential

But no one disputes that the potential payoff is huge.

Indeed, Garfield County sits atop the Green River Formation, which covers portions of western Colorado, northeast Utah and southwest Wyoming.

The formation is estimated to contain more than half of the world's oil shale reserves. Some officials believe the formation contains as much as 1.5 trillion barrels of recoverable shale oil -- more than three times the total that will ever be produced in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia -- and about 11 billion barrels of recoverable tar sands oil.

It is because of that potential that oil shale and tar sands development is gaining traction with some Western elected leaders.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) last year unveiled a 10-year vision for energy development that, among other things, calls for tapping the state's tar sands and oil shale reserves (Land Letter, March 24, 2011).

The Utah Geological Survey has estimated that there might be as much as 76 billion barrels of recoverable shale oil and as much as 28 billion barrels of tar sands oil in the state, mostly in the Uinta Basin in the state's northeast corner.

And last month, Utah issued a state permit to Red Leaf Resources, a small energy company in Sandy, Utah, allowing the company to break ground on what could become the first commercial oil shale production facility in the United States in 30 years (EnergyWire, April 9).

Still, at a public scoping hearing on the PEIS last year in Rifle, Colo., in Garfield County, residents and government leaders there appeared to be torn on the issue.

Garfield County Assessor Jim Yellico said during the meeting that he was excited about the possible increase in tax revenue but warned BLM that it needed to inform local communities about the exact water and energy demands industry would need to produce large volumes of oil (Land Letter, May 5, 2011).

The resolution approved yesterday, however, focuses the county's concerns on the Obama administration.

The resolution warns that "the rising price of gasoline, coupled with the ever increasing loss of good paying jobs due to the Administration's policies against energy development on western public lands, result in increasing hardships for families and the local economy, to the point where some fear the window of opportunity is about to close for a civil, lawful and orderly response as citizens feel more and more pressured and desperate financially."

Streater writes from Colorado Springs, Colo.