The richest oil shale deposits lie in the Piceance Basin, which runs northwest of the town of Rifle, Colorado. The bands of dark grey along the edge of this snow- capped ridge are oil shale. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
In the future, keeping your gas tank full could make disputes over water in the American
West a lot worse. It’s because energy companies hope to develop the oil shale industry.
Getting oil from shale requires lots of water, and the richest oil shale deposits happen to be
in the dry state of Colorado. Shawn Allee headed there to see why a fight over water and
oil could be in the works:
Transcript
In the future, keeping your gas tank full could make disputes over water in the American
West a lot worse. It’s because energy companies hope to develop the oil shale industry.
Getting oil from shale requires lots of water, and the richest oil shale deposits happen to be
in the dry state of Colorado. Shawn Allee headed there to see why a fight over water and
oil could be in the works:
Oil companies have their eyes on vast oil shale deposits in western Colorado, Utah and
Wyoming.
The federal government says companies could pull 800 billion barrels of oil out of that shale.
That’s about three times the proven oil reserves in Saudi Arabia.
Oil shale’s an impressive resource but it depends on water and there’s not much available
there.
How much would an oil shale industry need?
Shell Oil PR guy Tracy Boyd says the simple answer is that it will likely take his company
three barrels of water to extract one barrel of oil.
It’s because oil shale doesn’t really have oil in it – it’s got something called kerogen.
“You can heat this kerogen up. If you do it really slow, which we do for about 3.5 –
4 years, by putting heaters down in the rock formation, (you) produce a crude-oil
like material but with a little processing this is the first product we get out of it
which basically transportation fuels.”
Heating the ground require loads of electricity from new power plants and generators, and
they’d be cooled by water.
Oil companies are just experimenting with shale right now, but they’re securing rights to
water just in case.
Shell’s latest water claim is on Colorado’s Yampa River.
When Shell filed its court papers – some town governments warned they might fight the
claim.
One of these towns was Parker – a Denver suburb hundreds of miles east of the oil shale
region.
Frank Jaeger runs Parker’s water district.
Jaeger says, like other Colorado cities, Parker plans to expand.
“We know approximately what our numbers are and it will be somewhere in the
neighborhood of 150,000 people. In order to assure 150,000 people for another
150 years from now, I have to be proactive, I have to be at the front of the line for
the next drop of water available in the State of Colorado.”
Oil shale developers and cities across Colorado are set to fight over the water they might
need for the future, but some feel oil companies already have an edge.
“They’re actually one step ahead of the game.”
David Ableson is with Western Resource Advocates, an environmental group.
Ableson says energy companies tried developing oil shale several times in the last century.
They failed, but each time, they bought more water rights – just in case.
Now, they’ve got loads of water rights – and if the industry takes off, they’ll use them.
That could stop cities like Denver and its suburbs from getting water they hoped to have for
new homes and businesses.
Ableson says this isn’t just a Colorado fight, though.
He says some congressmen sell the idea of oil shale as an energy source the whole country
can depend on – even though its future could get tied up in Colorado water courts.
“And so, folks who are looking at this issue who do not live in CO, UT, or WY, need
to understand that when an elected official says, “this can solve our energy woes,”
that it’s actually a far more complicated situation than that and if there are severe
water impacts, that makes it much less likely that you could develop that
resource.”
The energy industry claims the concern over water is overblown – they say they just might
not need all that much water.
Ableson says that’s only true if oil shale fails. But if it succeeds, and we fill up on oil shale
gasoline – he predicts some towns or industries in the West will be left dry.
For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.