U.S. Senator Ken Salazar

Member: Finance, Agriculture, Energy, Ethics and Aging Committees

 

2300 15th Street, Suite 450 Denver, CO 80202 | 702 Hart Senate Building, Washington, D.C. 20510

 

 

For Immediate Release

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

CONTACT: Stephanie Valencia – 202-494- 8790
Cody Wertz – 303-350-0032

Sen. Salazar to Introduce Bill to Restore Thoughtful Approach to Commercial Oil Shale Development

WASHINGTON, DC – United States Senator Ken Salazar will introduce a bill that would restore an orderly process for any potential commercial development in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.

“We must remain vigilant and ensure a thoughtful approach to oil shale development,” said Senator Salazar. “Oil shale development would have significant impacts on the land and water on the Western Slope and all of Colorado. Proposed oil shale development would occur primarily in the Piceance Basin, a region that is already bracing for up to 50,000 new natural gas wells in the next decade. Oil shale development has the potential to be a boom to the local communities, but it is crucial that we do all we can to avoid the bust that the Western Slope experienced in the early 1980’s.”

The Salazar bill would restore an orderly process for the potential commercial development of oil shale and tar sands in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, which mirrors the Senate-passed 2005 energy bill. Specifically, the legislation would:

  • Provide one year for the completion of the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) on oil shale development and an additional 90-day comment period for the Governors of the affected states;
  • Provide one year for development of a commercial leasing program, after completion of the PEIS;
  • Require a report to Congress on (1) the research and development program authorized in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which was designed to identify available technologies for extracting oil from oil shale, (2) proposed lease terms, and (3) other conditions for a commercial leasing program, before any commercial leasing occurs;
  • Authorize the National Academy of Sciences to study and report on the importance of oil shale production in the U.S., the status of research and development efforts, and the probable environmental and socioeconomic impacts of commercial oil shale production, etc;
  • Require full compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, including a site-specific Environmental Impact Statement before a commercial lease sale and before any planned development.

The provisions of Senator Salazar’s bill are based on the language that was contained in the Senate-passed Energy Bill of 2005. The Senate version of that bill passed the Senate with a broad bipartisan vote of 85-12.

Unfortunately, many of the Senate-passed provisions were stripped in conference negotiations and replaced in the final version of the bill with language that imposed unrealistic deadlines on the agencies. That language has been interpreted to require final leasing regulations and commencement of commercial leasing in 2008, before the results of important research and development have been completed and without any results of that research being known.

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