Dubya tries to cram oil shale through

[Oak]

Oil shale impact report may be delayed

By BOBBY MAGILL
The Daily Sentinel

Friday, May 11, 2007
DENVER — The long- awaited environmental impact statement expected to detail the extent of possible commercial oil shale development in Colorado and the water and energy it may consume is tentatively set to be released July 13.

The U.S. Department of Interior this week issued to the Colorado Department of Natural Resources a complete timeline outlining the expected development of the Bureau of Land Management’s commercial oil shale program, now in its fledgling stages.

The state is expected to receive a copy of the seven- volume, 2,000-page environmental impact statement next week, but will have only two weeks to review and comment on it, Department of Natural Resources Assistant Director Mike King told the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission on Thursday.

“That is simply not a sufficient amount of time,” he said, adding later the department must rush to pull together staff from various departments to get comments to the BLM by the May 29 deadline.

Gov. Bill Ritter and the states of Wyoming and Utah have protested the deadline. Ritter asked the Department of Interior to give the states until Sept. 11 to respond to the document. King said the BLM has not responded yet to the protest.

BLM Washington spokeswoman Heather Feeney said Thursday the oil shale leasing program’s timeline may change slightly, possibly to reflect the states’ request for a deadline extension to comment on the impact statement.

“I’m pretty sure it’s not the time they asked for,” she said. “The BLM is setting the schedule, not the states.”

The environmental impact statement is critical because it will address the water needs and impacts of oil shale development within the BLM’s White River Resource Area, a part of Garfield, Rio Blanco and southern Moffat counties expected to see extremely heavy natural gas development.

A report still being drafted by the BLM, outlining the reasonably foreseeable natural gas development in the White River Resource Area’s portion of the Piceance Basin, which is ground zero for commercial oil shale leasing, is expected to show that about 22,000 natural gas wells could be drilled there in the coming decades, King said.

About 400 wells exist there today. The area’s 1997 management plan now being revised called for only 1,100 gas wells to be drilled there. BLM Spokesman David Boyd said the agency hasn’t finalized an estimate for drilling activity there.

With the extremely high oil shale and natural gas development expected in the Piceance Basin, King told the commission a commercial oil shale program must have public support before it can go forth.

“The public buy-in of oil shale in Colorado is critical to making this viable and sustainable,” he said.

If the states’ May 29 deadline to critique the environmental impact statement remains and all else goes as planned, the document will be released to the public July 13, kicking off a 90-day public-comment period.

 

[1_pointer]

I'd be pretty surprised if they get the timeframes changed. 15 days is all that is required for a protest period and 30 days after that for an appeal period. However, it will be interesting if this does get appealed whether or not a stay is granted due in large part to the size of the document and the limited time to review it.

 

[Oak]

They got an extra two weeks:

Colorado, Wyoming get extra two weeks to review oil shale plan

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 16, 2007

DENVER - Wyoming and Colorado will get about a month - three months short of what they requested - to study a federal plan for wide-scale oil shale development in the region.

Wyoming, Colorado and Utah have until June 12 to review the draft environmental impact statement on oil shale development on federal lands in southwest Wyoming, western Colorado and eastern Utah. The Interior Department agreed Tuesday to extend the original review deadline of May 29 by two weeks - far short of the 120 days sought by Wyoming and Colorado.

"We're disappointed. We hoped to have the opportunity to do a comprehensive review of the 2,000 pages and really provide in-depth and meaningful comments on the EIS," Mike King, deputy director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, said Wednesday.

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter and Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal sent letters to the Interior Department in April saying the states need more time to review the document, which will address environmental, social and economic impacts of oil-shale development.

Temple Stevenson, a natural resources policy adviser to Freudenthal, said Wyoming would have preferred a longer extension.

"Two weeks will certainly help, although a month would have helped more," Stevenson said. "We'll take what we can get."

Interior officials have noted that the federal government is already behind the schedule set by Congress for completing the final environmental analysis. The 2005 federal energy bill directed the Bureau of Land Management, part of the Interior Department, to complete it by February.

"While we have not met the deadline, the BLM is still required to complete the (programmatic environmental impact statement) as soon as possible," Assistant Interior Secretary Stephen Allred wrote in a letter Monday to Ritter.

Federal officials have also said the states will have an additional 90 days to review the plan after the draft is released to the public, which is expected to see the draft in mid-July.

Wyoming, Colorado and Utah are among 14 "cooperating agencies," including a few cities and counties, that see the preliminary plan before the public does and have more opportunity to weigh in.

Because the state of Colorado has a "fiduciary and stewardship responsibility" to its residents, it needs more time for meaningful input on the oil shale plan, Ritter wrote in an April 17 letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.

King said Colorado state technical experts are reviewing the preliminary plan, sent to the states this week. He said Colorado officials might have to submit "placeholder comments" at the end of the four weeks and prepare more in-depth feedback later.

"For the BLM to just glibly say that the state of Colorado can comment along with the rest of the public ignores the state's special status," said Bob Randall, an attorney with Boulder-based Western Resource Advocates, an environmental law and policy.

Randall said the schedule approved by Congress for the oil shale assessment was ambitious.

"It really was a huge task to be completed in a short time," he added.

Shale reserves in Colorado, Utah and southwest Wyoming are believed to contain at least 1 trillion barrels of oil - three times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia, or enough to theoretically supply the United States for a century.

But the oil, or kerogen, is locked in layers of hard rock, and the technology for affordably heating and extracting the liquid is still evolving. Local governments have urged federal officials to move cautiously because the impact on water and other resources isn't clear.

Last year, the Interior Department approved 10-year leases for oil-shale research and development projects for Shell Frontier Oil & Gas Co., Chevron USA and EGL Resources Inc. on separate sites in northwest Colorado. Oil Shale Exploration Co. won approval last month of an experimental project in Utah.

Area officials and residents also are wary because of the oil-shale bust of the early 1980s. Western Colorado's economy was sent reeling when falling oil prices led Exxon to shut down its $5 billion Colony oil-shale project in Parachute and lay off 2,200 workers.

 

[1_pointer]

I am suprised! I will be interested to see if the state's file any appeals.