Salazar Blocks Bush Oil-Shale Development Plan in Western U.S.

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Bloomberg

Salazar Blocks Bush Oil-Shale Development Plan in Western U.S.
By Daniel Whitten

Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is withdrawing leases the Bush administration offered for commercial production of oil-shale formations on federal land, saying the fees the Bush administration set were inadequate.

Exxon-Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc are among companies working on technology to extract the oil by heating the rocks. Oil-shale formations in western U.S. states could hold up to 800 billion barrels of oil, according to a government estimate.

Salazar said today he would offer leases under new terms.

“We are not taking it off the table for the possibility of development but we are going to be thoughtful and deliberative,” Salazar said in a conference call with reporters.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aF6ZDx9KbxYg&refer=us

[Hawkeye-X]

1. Salazar needs to set up a price that includes GIVING the people jobs

forming unions, and a living wage for each lease they sell.

That's the only acceptable way - also they must pay a huge deposit to guarantee those things.

[Grinchie]

2. Hooray! Finally some commons sense

Oil Shale is a lot like Ethanol. A net energy loser and it take huge amounts of water to process.

[ohio2007]

3. oil around $38 bbl now. Back when it was $147 bbl it made sense to use US resources

and employ US workers on US soil but.... Mexico and Canada supply most of our oil and at a fraction of what the extraction price would have been to turn a profit.

Next oil bubble maybe when gas is predicted to be $6/gal by the summer driving season