Posted on 06/29/2007 1:00:05 PM PDT by Rick_Michael
An Alabama energy exploration company likely will transport Utah oil shale to Canada to test whether a new technology would allow the economic and environmentally acceptable extraction of a substance that could be turned into motor fuel, federal officials said Thursday.
The Bureau of Land Management has issued a research development and demonstration lease to Oil Shale Exploration Co. (OSEC) that allows the company to submit a detailed plan on how it would remove the rock left over from a 1980s mining operation near Vernal.
The company hopes a horizontal-kiln process developed in Australia to extract contaminants from soil will be the pathway to producing fuel from oil-shale reserves in the Green River Formation. The formation covers portions of Utah, Colorado and Wyoming and could hold the equivalent of 800 billion barrels of shale oil that may be recovered, the BLM said.
But the lease is only a tiny step in that direction, said Jim Kohler, BLM solid minerals branch chief in Salt Lake City. That's because all the lease allows OSEC to do is file another plan, which, if approved, would let the company take only 1,000 tons of White River Mine shale to Canada.
No retorting would be allowed in Utah until OSEC can prove it can extract enough kerogen, the waxy substance found in oil shale, to make enough synthetic crude oil to refine into diesel, jet fuel or naphtha economically and in compliance with federal environmental laws, Kohler said. The company also would have to obtain all appropriate local, state and federal permits to safeguard air and water quality and other resources.
There is a major catch: No oil refinery in the United States currently is accepting kerogen for processing, and oil companies have indicated they are not interested in building new refineries in the country.
That would affect OSEC's ability to prove getting oil out of rocks would be economical. "That's one of the key points," Kohler said. "If you don't have a place to turn it into a useful product, what good does it do you?"
Attempts to reach OSEC representatives in Alabama and Utah on Thursday afternoon were unsuccessful. OSEC is represented in Utah by Jim Hansen and Associates, a Farmington consulting firm run by the former 1st District congressman.
Kohler said some media reports have gotten their facts wrong about the OSEC lease, including an Associated Press report in May that said the BLM had approved reopening the White River mine and that OSEC would be offered a lease to work the federal land within days.
Though OSEC could reopen the mine if it satisfies the long series of requirements inherent in its lease, in fact the agency "hadn't even issued the lease yet" when the AP report was published, Kohler said.
A later phase of the OSEC lease that could come into play would allow another company, Oil Tech, to transport 30,000 of the available 50,000 tons of shale rock to a site on State Institutional Trust Lands for testing with existing retort technology.
While that provision would require BLM to analyze the environmental effects of hauling the rock off the federal land, once it is on state land the BLM is out of the picture, said Stephen Bloch, staff attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.
"They're allowing it to leave, but once it leaves, they're not concerned about downstream," said Bloch, whose organization opposes the oil shale lease due to the tremendous impact on air and water conventional retorting causes.
Those concerns are the foundation of a measure the U.S. House of Representatives passed Wednesday to slow the pace on oil shale development in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said his legislation would ensure oil shale is developed in a "responsible" manner.
phenetz@sltrib.com
I saw another article today that said congress was set to prevent leases in the govt owned areas where this shale oil is found. Looks like more energy independence thinking from the Dems.
IOW, NEVER!.......
Yeah...I’m not sure Utah’s included in that, but you can’t get a good idea past them. : )
WTF? Oh, the rats' energy policy
I’m trying to come up with a snappy retort.
Nancy PeePeeLosi is calling Michael J. Fox to testify about how to end our dependence on foreign oil. Shaky (as he's fondly known on Capital Hill) is renowned for his efforts with "Doc" Brown to develop the biofuel Flux Capacitor.
That was before he discovered that Parkinson's Disease can be cured with Federally-funded Idiotic Stem Cell research.
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