While the Obama administration works to finalize a national policy to guide oil shale development on federal land in three Western states, the political battle over what that plan should look like rages on.

The latest is a series of newspaper advertisements from the Colorado Wildlife Federation endorsing the "preferred alternative" in a draft programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) that would significantly downsize a George W. Bush administration plan to develop oil shale.

The Bush plan made roughly 1.9 million acres of public land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming available for commercial oil shale development. The Bureau of Land Management'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).

Specifically, the Colorado Wildlife Federation advertisements thank Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for "standing up for our water and wildlife and taking a cautious approach to oil shale leasing and development."

"Our water and wildlife and the outdoor jobs that they support are just too valuable to gamble away on oil shale speculation by premature commercial leasing that will tie up more federal public lands in Colorado without public benefit," said Suzanne O'Neill, the federation's executive director.

The ads -- published yesterday in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel and The Pueblo Chieftain -- follow formal resolutions by county commissions in Colorado and Utah ripping BLM's proposal to severely restrict the amount of land available for research and development.

Garfield and Mesa counties in northwest Colorado and Uintah County in northeast Utah approved resolutions this month demanding BLM abandon development of the PEIS and adopt the Bush plan that was approved in 2008.

But the Colorado Wildlife Federation and other environmental groups are concerned about impacts to water quality and quantity in the Piceance Basin, which lies between the White and Colorado rivers on the state's northwest side.

Critics say the largely experimental process of extracting crude from shale rock requires heating the kerogen, or fossilized algae, to 650 degrees Fahrenheit or more, requiring huge expenditures of energy and water. Both the White and Colorado rivers likely would be tapped to operate drilling equipment as well as to cool turbines at new power plants that would be necessary to support oil shale development projects.

A Colorado Water Conservation Board report last year that analyzed state water needs through 2050 estimated that 39 billion gallons of water a year would be needed to produce 1.5 million barrels of oil a day from oil shale deposits in the state (Land Letter, Jan. 13, 2011).

"Since there is currently no commercially viable technology to produce oil shale here in Colorado, we have ample time as well as a responsibility before commercial leasing to continue researching the impacts of development on our limited water supplies and wildlife habitat," O'Neill said. "Anyone who says this is unimportant is simply ignoring Colorado sportsmen, local communities, water managers, ranchers and even some oil and gas companies."

A potential gold mine

Oil shale proponents say it would be irresponsible not to develop this potential gold mine of domestic crude.

Garfield, Mesa and Uintah counties sit 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, and some estimate it holds 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.

Industry groups have consistently asserted that the 2008 Bush plan provides an excellent blueprint to encourage development of oil shale and tar sands resources without compromising environmental health and safety. 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, for example, 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" (EnergyWire, April 10).

The resolutions approved this month by the Garfield County and Uintah County commissions warn that "the rising price of gasoline, coupled with the ever increasing loss of good paying jobs due to the [Obama] Administration's policies against energy development on western public lands, result in increasing hardships for families and the local economy."

Click here to read the newspaper ads.

Streater writes from Colorado Springs, Colo.