The region has been through several oil shale booms and busts over the last century.
NPR: Industry Seeks to Extract Oil from Rocky Mountain Shale
The Oil and Oil Shale Assets of the USA and Canada: Boom or Bust?
Another find, the Green River formation in Wyoming, could contain an astounding 1.4 trillion barrels of oil shale.
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There's a saying in western Colorado: Oil shale has always had a promising future, and it always will.
NPR: Industry Seeks to Extract Oil from Rocky Mountain Shale
Oil shale is sedimentary rock with oil in it that has historically been considered too expensive to process.
OK, so here I am in my kitchen and I'm holding a piece of oil shale in my hand.
NPR: Industry Seeks to Extract Oil from Rocky Mountain Shale
Mr. TERRY O'CONNOR (Oil Shale Program, Shell Oil Company): It's called the in-situ conversion process or the acronym, ICP.
NPR: Industry Seeks to Extract Oil from Rocky Mountain Shale
"It was built by the county in the early '80s and late '70s, primarily for oil shale, " Merill says.
Many of them came to work at an Exxon oil shale processing plant.
NPR: Industry Seeks to Extract Oil from Rocky Mountain Shale
Oil shale and tar sands are other sources of liquid fuel that are harder on the environment than petroleum.
Merrell spent five years "mentally" designing an oil shale "retort, " in which pulverized rock is baked, and vaporized oil extracted.
Oil shale is an idea that was tested a generation ago, then abandoned when the price of crude oil plunged.
Shell's other projects include a service station partnership with Sinopec in Jiangsu, and an oil shale development in Jilin Province.
But Congress passed a measure last December that prohibits spending to establish a program to lease oil shale on federal lands.
And as Jeff Brady explained, getting rock to a processing plant was the major expense that doomed past oil shale efforts.
NPR: Industry Seeks to Extract Oil from Rocky Mountain Shale
Then there are the 1.5 trillion barrels that Shell estimates are trapped in the oil shale deposits of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.
The federal government estimates that there's more than 1 trillion barrels of burnable fuel in the oil shale of the Rocky Mountains.
NPR: Industry Seeks to Extract Oil from Rocky Mountain Shale
Congress recently held a hearing about it, and the energy bill before lawmakers would step up oil shale development on federal land.
NPR: Industry Seeks to Extract Oil from Rocky Mountain Shale
Colorado fears another boom-and-bust oil shale cycle, as in the early 1980s.
Of course, no one's going to process oil shale in a kitchen.
NPR: Industry Seeks to Extract Oil from Rocky Mountain Shale
It was a Republican speak-in, and their message was clear: Start the drill - offshore in Alaska, tap oil shale in Western states.
First, NPR's Jeff Brady visited a small Colorado town where people remember the last time that oil shale was supposed to make them rich.
NPR: Industry Seeks to Extract Oil from Rocky Mountain Shale
L., total emissions are almost two times as high as with conventional oil, and for oil shale they can be more than twice as high.
New technology, avidly sought today, could well spur any number of alternative energy sources: oil sands, oil shale, natural gas converted to liquid, coal converted to liquid, etc.
"My oil shale has uranium, " Ed Godin, chief executive of Continental Precious Minerals, told a crowd that had earlier been treated to a talk called "Uranium--The Biggest Boom in History!"
Thus, without even considering the technological advancements that would be made were oil shale to be returned to, oil shale is a long-term, sensible solution literally right beneath our feet.
We also have huge land and offshore oil reserves vital for transportation fuel, including enormous amounts contained along with gas in oil shale deposits amounting to several hundred years of supply.
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Several environmental risks are associated with extracting oil shale.
Add to that an estimated 1 trillion barrels of oil sands resources and another 2.8 trillion barrels of oil shale, and we can all afford to put down our "End Is Nigh" placards.
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