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The rules would govern lease management and royalty payments should extracting kerogen from rock for further refining into fuel ever prove economically feasible - an open question given the likelihood of carbon taxes, lack of available Colorado River water and a host of environmental protection restrictions.

I know this is the line being repeated endlessly by the environmentalists, but I attended Shell's conference on their new in-situ technique of extraction, and it uses water that is available in the rock, and doesn't require any extra water. Anyone who looked at a map could see that the Colorado river abuts only a tiny portion of the oil shale reserves anyway, so whether there is extra water available in the Colorado River is really not even relevant.

There is a lot of water in the shale oil formation that becomes available upon the fracturing that is part of the new extraction process.

It's not an aquifer, it's water held in the tight pore spaces of the shale, so it won't affect any existing water rights.

That in-situ water is frozen into a curtain of ice that surrounds the extraction area. Then the oil is pumped out - it's light sweet crude , of the highest quality and isn't going to require much, if any, refining.When the site is finished, the ice curtain will be melted in place. There is no tailings pile, no waste water , no clean-up except to re-vegetate a small well pad.

It is viable, as Shell's willingness to commit real money toward it, and it could solve our oil problems cleanly and efferently.

That's why our Democratic friends in Congress are doing everything they can to stop it.

“but I attended Shell’s conference on their new in-situ technique of extraction, and it uses water that is available in the rock, and doesn’t require any extra water.”

Excellent!

Now we’re getting down to cases. Thanks for info!

Kelly