Energy Dispute Over Rockies Riches
http://www.truthout.org/122908N
A trove of oil shale may be a boon. But the science to extract fuel
is
imperfect, and locals worry about their water supplies, which
ultimately feed Southern California reservoirs.
Salt Lake City - A titanic battle between the West's two
traditional power brokers - Big Oil and Big Water - has begun.
At stake is one of the largest oil reserves in the world, a vast
cache trapped beneath the Rocky Mountains containing an estimated 800
billion barrels - about three times the reserves of Saudi Arabia.
Extracting oil from rocky seams of underground shale is not only
expensive, but also requires massive amounts of water, a precious
resource crucial to continued development in the nation's fastest-
growing region.
The conflict between oil and water interests has now come to a
head. On Oct. 31, Congress allowed a moratorium on oil shale leasing
to expire. That paved the way for the Bush administration to finalize
leasing rules last month that opened 2 million acres of federal land
to exploration.
Oil companies say that at a time of increasing foreign oil
dependence, it would be unconscionable to forgo exploiting oil
shale's
potential.
"Considering the magnitude of this resource - it is so huge
relative to other hydrocarbon resources around the world - it merits
taking a look at trying any method we can, safely and responsibly, to
get at it," said Tracy C. Boyd, communications and sustainability
manager for Shell Oil Co.
Oil shale companies acknowledge that the technology required to
superheat shale to extract oil is unproven. They also acknowledge
that
they are uncertain how much water would be needed in the process,
although some experts calculate it would take 10 barrels of water to
get one barrel of oil from shale.
That water-to-oil equation has inflamed officials in the upper
Rockies, who are raising the alarm about the cumulative effect of
energy projects on the region's water supplies, which ultimately feed
Southern California reservoirs via the Colorado River.
"There are estimates that oil shale could use all of the
remaining
water in upper Colorado River Basin," said Susan Daggett, a
commissioner on the Denver Water Board. "That essentially pits oil
shale against people's needs."
Even with the precipitous drop in oil prices and the staggering
start- up costs and risks associated with oil shale exploration, oil
companies are rushing ahead.
"As long as we continue to be a nation that is hooked on liquid
fuel," said Boyd, "we need to look at anything we can do to tap the
sources of energy in this country."
Prospectors have known about the oil shale deposits in the
Rockies
for more than a century, but the technology to extract it has
remained
imperfect, expensive and polluting.
A variety of experimental methods have been developed. Although
details are closely held, the broad outlines are similar.
Shell has the most mature technology, which it has been
experimenting with at its Mahogany test site, near Rifle, Colo.
Tucked
into a rolling landscape of empty range land, the company has sunk
heaters half a mile into oil shale seams and subjected the rock to
700-
degree temperatures. Over weeks or even months, a liquid known as
kerogen is produced, which can be refined into diesel and jet fuel.
To prevent the brewing hydrocarbons from spoiling groundwater,
the
heated rock core is surrounded by 20-to-30-foot-thick impermeable ice
walls, frozen by electric refrigeration units.
Other companies' methods are more akin to open pit mining, in
which millions of tons of rock are excavated and then fed into a
massive above-ground cooker.
All of the processes require prodigious amounts of water, either
for the electrical plants needed for heating and freezing or for the
web of industrial facilities needed to extract the oil.
But for all the years of research into oil shale extraction,
there
is little hard information on exactly how much water would be drained
from the region.
In its recent environmental review of proposed oil shale
projects,
the federal Bureau of Land Management, which oversees energy leasing
on public lands, was unable to estimate the industry's region-wide
water use.
Mike Vanden Berg, the Utah Geological Survey's principal
researcher for oil shale projects, said, "I still don't know how much
water is used.... No one does."
Meanwhile, already- parched Western states bracing for more
growth
are completing water supply inventories. A Colorado study projected
that by 2050, with the state's oil shale operations at full capacity,
the industry will require 14 times more power than currently
generated
by the state's largest power plant.
The study's sobering bottom line is that meeting oil shale's
energy demands could require more water than Colorado is entitled to
under an interstate compact.
"Can groundwater be protected?" asked Harris Sherman, executive
director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. "Areas
where
this technology will be used are all tributaries for the headwaters
for all of the seven Colorado Basin states."
Despite the objections, oil shale development has been pushed
forward by a series of recent actions. In an effort to encourage the
fledgling industry, officials said, new regulations allow oil shale
operators to pay unusually low royalty rates. The system calls for
producers to pay 5% for the first five years, increasing 1% each year
until reaching 12.5%, the standard federal oil and gas royalty rate.
In recent weeks, the industry was included in the $700-billion
government bailout package with investment and tax incentives to help
oil shale producers build refineries and other expensive
infrastructure.
Though the region's elected officials support efforts to discover
new sources of domestic oil, they say that with so many unanswered
water questions, public land managers should be slowing the pace of
development, not speeding it up.
The governors of Colorado and Wyoming have expressed concerns
about the venture's effect on water in their states.
Not so, Utah. The state contains the least-rich shale deposit but
is the most enthusiastic booster of the unconventional oil source.
Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. recently declared Utah "open for business as it
relates to oil shale."
The renewed push for oil shale development comes at a time when
conventional energy companies are being blamed for squandering and
fouling water across the West.
Wyoming and Montana are squabbling over water quality concerns
about coal-bed methane drilling. Colorado and New Mexico towns have
discovered benzene and other dangerous chemicals in their wells, with
energy projects the suspected culprits.
Ranchers in the region say their crops and livestock suffer as
oil
and gas production drains underground aquifers. Sportsmen complain
that rivers and streams are being compromised by the energy industry.
The Environmental Protection Agency, in official comments to the
Bureau of Land Management, expressed concerns about the possibility
that oil shale production would deposit "salts, selenium, arsenic,
and
polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons in groundwater."
Craig Thompson found many of the same compounds when he studied
groundwater pollution from an abandoned oil shale project in western
Wyoming that began during the last oil shale boom, in the 1970s.
Despite 30 years of cleanup efforts, he said, the aquifer is still
not
free of chemicals.
"Development of oil shale is a groundwater nightmare," said
Thompson, a chemist. "Oil shale serves as the floor for the aquifer.
When you heat up the aquifer, it dissolves nasty stuff like fluoride
and arsenic and selenium and cyanide ... the list goes on."
For now, with the support of Congress and the Bush
administration,
oil companies appear to have the upper hand.
That might change with President-elect Barack Obama's selection
this month of Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, a former water lawyer, to
head the Department of Interior.
Salazar, a Democrat, has criticized the breakneck speed at which
oil shale efforts are advancing.
"Over and over again the administration has admitted that it has
no idea how much of Colorado's water supply would be required to
develop oil shale on a commercial scale, no idea where the power
would
come from and no idea whether the technology is even viable," Salazar
said last month.
But as long as the demand for fuel remains high, the dream of
squeezing oil from rock will probably persist.
"Oil shale is the last refuge of the hydrocarbon pioneers,"
Thompson said. "It's always been that last refuge because it's such a
poor excuse for a fuel. Here's a commodity that's been developing for
100 years, and we still don't know anything about it."
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