[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 101 (Wednesday, June 18, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5743-S5745]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        OIL SHALE AND GAS PRICES

  Mr. SALAZAR. Madam President, I come to the floor this evening to 
speak a few minutes about the issue of oil shale and gas prices.
  Earlier today, the President of the United States, George W. Bush, 
spoke to the Nation at a press conference in which he said there were 
some things we could do immediately to try to address the energy crisis 
we are facing in America. One of the things he said could be done 
immediately was to begin the development of oil shale in the West, 
specifically the oil shale which now exists and is found in my State of 
Colorado. With all due respect to the President of the United States, 
he is wrong. There is nothing about the oil locked up in these shales, 
in these rocks of western Colorado that will bring about the kind of 
relief we somehow hope to be able to bring about to the consumers of 
oil in our country.
  The fact is, we are a long ways from knowing whether oil shale can be 
a part of the portfolio of fulfilling the energy needs of the United 
States of America. To be frank about this, oil shale has been looked at 
as a possible source for oil for now nearly 100 years. There have been 
many booms and many busts with respect to oil shale development in the 
West and in my State of Colorado. I feel particular ownership of this 
issue because of the fact that 80 percent of the oil shale reserves we 
know of in the United States of America are located in my State.
  Oftentimes, what will happen is people will make a comparison to the 
tar sands of Alberta in Canada, and they will say: You have the same 
kinds of possibilities within the State of Colorado. Nothing is further 
from the truth. The tar sands, the oil sands in Canada, essentially, 
are developed simply by putting water and mixing it with the sands, 
with the temperature being 200 to 300 degrees, and the oil is then 
separated from the sands. That is because of the way the hydrocarbons 
exist in those sands. They could be easily separated from those sands. 
Today, millions of barrels are flowing into the United States from that 
development in Alberta, led by companies such as Suncor.
  In contrast, what we are talking about in my State of Colorado, 
across the great and most beautiful part of our Nation, the Western 
Slope of Colorado, is oil that is locked in shale. Notwithstanding the 
billions of dollars that have been spent on research, no one has yet 
found the key to unlock the oil from that shale. So to say somehow 
giving away hundreds of thousands of acres of land for this, where this 
oil shale is contained, and allowing that land to be leased for oil 
shale development and saying that is a panacea for the gas price 
problem we are facing today is simply wrong. It is not true. It is not 
doable.
  In 2005, I worked very closely with my Republican chairman, whom I 
call a great friend. The two Senators from the land of enchantment, 
Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman, have now changed places. One is 
chairman and one is ranking member. But in 2005, Senator Domenici was 
the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee. We worked very closely to 
come up in our committee with legislation on oil shale development that 
allowed us to move forward to examine the possibility of oil shale as 
one of the items in our portfolio for our energy future. We came up 
with an approach that said we would go ahead and provide research and 
development leases to oil companies so they could go out and do the 
kind of research and development that is needed to take place in order 
to determine whether oil shale can be developed. So there are now some 
leases that have been issued for research and development in the State 
of Colorado. For each of those companies that has been given these 160 
acres of leased land for research and development, they also are given 
a right under the law to get an additional 5,000 acres of land they can 
lease. So that is over 25,000 acres that can be developed into oil 
shale if, in fact, we can discover the technology that will let us do 
that.

  But let us not fool the world. Let's not fool the world in the way 
the world has been fooled since the 1920s about the possibility of oil 
shale. Let's not let oil shale be allowed to be used as a political 
tool, as the President and others try to address the gas crisis our 
country is in. The fact of the matter is we are a long way from being 
able to say oil shale can be developed in a commercial way for the 
United States of America, and the approach we developed out of our 
Senate Energy Committee and passed out of this Chamber in the 2005 
Energy Policy Act is the

[[Page S5744]]

right way to go. It embraces a thoughtful and constructive way forward 
to determining whether we can, in fact, develop the oil that is 
currently locked up in the rock.
  I am not the only one who is saying these things. Chevron, one of the 
major oil companies of the world, in its own statement to the 
programmatic environmental impact statement comments submitted to the 
BLM, said the following:

       Chevron believes that a full scale commercial leasing 
     program should not proceed at this time without clear 
     demonstration of commercial technologies.

  That is an oil company that obviously has the capacity and the 
expertise to know the reality of oil shale and is, frankly, being 
candid and honest and straightforward with the American people about 
the possibility of oil shale.
  Next, I would also point to the statements we have heard from the 
Department of the Interior. A few months ago, we had a hearing in front 
of the Energy Committee where the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, 
Assistant Secretary Allred, appeared before the committee. I asked the 
Assistant Secretary a number of questions. I will quote, again, as I 
did last week, what I asked and what his answers were.
  I asked Assistant Secretary Allred the following:

       When I look at your chart on oil shale development on 
     public lands, you have at some point on that chart this 
     little brown dot that says ``project completion: phase 3--
     commercial.'' When do you think that will happen? What year?

  The Assistant Secretary Allred responds:

       Senator, it is hard to predict that because . . .

  And then there was silence. So I then asked:

       2011?

  He responded:

       Oh, no, I think, I think . . .

  Silence.
  I asked again:

       2016?

  He says in response to that:

       Probably in the latter half.

  I say:

       2015 and beyond? 2015 and beyond.

  So I continued to question him along these lines.
  The bottom line is that even within the Department of the Interior, 
at the highest levels, they are saying that if we ever get to 
commercial production of oil shale, it is probably out until 2015. That 
is 7 years from now. Don't tell me that is going to have any effect 
today on gas prices, and yet, it is one of the cornerstones of what the 
President of the United States proposed to be the solution to the 
energy crisis we face in America today.
  I beg to differ with the President of the United States, and I will 
not let the President of the United States or the Department of the 
Interior run roughshod over the State of Colorado. Not today, not next 
month, not next year, not in 10 years. It is not going to happen. We 
can develop oil shale in the State of Colorado, but if we are going to 
do it, we are going to do it in a thoughtful and deliberate way.
  I am proud of the fact that the leading newspapers of the western 
part of Colorado, including the Denver Post and the papers in Utah, 
have essentially said the same thing. These papers have lived with the 
history of the booms and the busts, including the big bust of the 
1980s, with respect to oil shale. The Denver Post in its editorial 
says:

       Developing oil shale has been a dream since the early 20th 
     century, but careful planning is needed to make sure the 
     dream doesn't turn into a nightmare.

  It goes on to say some other things that are very supportive of a 
thoughtful and deliberative approach that I have tried to bring to oil 
shale development.
  The Grand Junction Sentinel, which essentially is the newspaper that 
covers all the Western Slope of Colorado, some 20 counties, a paper 
whose editorial board knows good economics can come from thoughtful 
development of our natural resources but also a newspaper that has 
stood tall in terms of making sure we are protecting the long-term 
sustainability of the Western Slope. Here is what the Grand Junction 
Sentinel says in its editorial page. The Grand Junction Sentinel 
probably knows as much about water and public lands and natural 
resources as much as any other newspaper around the West. They know it 
because they live it. They know because they know that across the 
western part of Colorado, most of the land is owned by the Federal 
Government. The Federal Government owns 33 percent of the State of 
Colorado and most of that is located on the Western Slope.

  Here is what the Grand Junction Sentinel, a conservative editorial 
board, had to say about this oil shale development. It says:

       The notion that the one-year moratorium on commercial 
     leasing approved by Congress last year is somehow a barrier 
     to commercial development is nonsense. If anything, that 
     moratorium should be extended.

  It continues. The editorial was titled: ``Congress is Pushing Another 
Shale Sham.''
  Continuing, it says:

       Whatever technology is used to recover oil from shale, the 
     impacts will include massive surface disturbance, huge 
     demands for additional electric generation, and reservoirs 
     full of Colorado's limited water, not to mention the hordes 
     of additional workers who will descend on this area.

  The Grand Junction Sentinel says in its editorial, joining the Denver 
Post, that as we move forward to look at oil shale as a possible energy 
source for our country, then we need to be thoughtful in terms of how 
we move forward.
  The Salt Lake Tribune. There are some--a much smaller percentage of 
the shale we are talking about is actually located in Utah, but the 
Salt Lake Tribune essentially has said the same thing. It says:

       The development of oil shale deposits in eastern Utah, 
     Wyoming, and Colorado would be an expensive undertaking, 
     risky for the environment, and a drain on dwindling water 
     resources, with no quick return in additional oil supplies to 
     reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.

  `` . . . with no quick return in additional oil supplies to reduce 
America's dependence on foreign oil.''
  So when the President of the United States stands and he says to the 
American people that here is the answer to your high cost of gas and 
diesel and jet fuel today, and he says we are going to go to oil shale, 
there is a misrepresentation on what the contribution is going to be 
from oil shale development and a misstatement and a misapprehension, 
frankly, of what the facts and reality are with respect to oil shale 
development in the Western Slope of Colorado.
  I wish to focus on a couple of those issues in a little more specific 
way. One of the realities we all know in the West--those of us who 
share the water of the Colorado River Basin--is that we live in a place 
that has a very limited water supply. The Colorado River supplies water 
to seven States: Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and 
California. For 100 years, we have figured out a way of living together 
and sharing the supplies of water within the river. It is said today 
that there are some 500,000 to 1 million acre feet of water that can 
still be developed and then used within my State of Colorado under the 
compacts that govern the sharing of water on the Colorado River. Those 
compacts are very important. There is also a truth about oil shale and 
how it will use the water that is allocated to Colorado under those 
compacts.
  But we don't know how much water is going to be required for oil 
shale development. We don't know whether it is 500,000 or 1 million or 
2 million acre feet, and we don't know what the consequences, 
therefore, would be on agriculture within Colorado or on the 
municipalities that so depend on that water. So it is no surprise that 
most of the water entities involved in protecting Colorado's water 
compacts have come out against a head-long rush into oil shale 
development because they are concerned about what will happen with 
respect to the water supplies of the Colorado River if, in fact, we 
move forward at the full-scale commercial oil shale leasing program in 
a premature way.
  So it would be my hope that as we look at the possibilities for 
dealing with the current energy prices, that we try to focus on real 
solutions. The real solutions, first and foremost, are for us to look 
long term and to avoid the failed policies of the past 30 years under, 
frankly, both Republican and Democratic administrations that have

[[Page S5745]]

gotten us to the point today where we are so overdependent on foreign 
oil that not only our national policy but our economic reality is being 
driven by that massive overdependence. So embracing the new world of 
energy, where we are looking at greater efficiencies, where we are 
looking at alternative fuels, where we are looking at advanced 
technologies such as those of the hybrid plug-in vehicle, and where we 
are looking at the development of our conventional resources in a 
thoughtful, honest, and balanced way is a way forward. It has to be the 
kind of energy policy we can sustain, not over a week or a political 
season or even the term of one President, but over a longer period of 
time. It is the kind of challenge for America that should summon the 
kind of political courage among all those who are involved in this 
debate, in the same way we were able to take on the Manhattan Project 
and build the atomic bomb in less than 4 years, where we were able to 
move forward and put a man on the Moon in less than 10 years from the 
time President Kennedy announced that vision and that goal for America. 
That is important, and that is long term.
  It is also important that we do what we can in the short term to 
address this issue. We have had conversations about speculation of the 
markets and how speculation might be accounting for somewhere between 
25 and 40 percent of the high price of oil we see today. We need to 
look into that question and see whether we can bring the rapid 
speculation under control. Those are undertakings we can take on and 
take on in the very near term.
  In addition, I have heard my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle say what we need to do is to open up all the lands in ANWR and 
other lands within the interior and offshore in order for us to be able 
to bring in additional supply into our energy stream for America. There 
is a possibility for us to open additional lands. There are lands, for 
example, within the gulf coast of Mexico, which we opened in the 2006 
Energy bill, where we added some 8 million acres of additional land in 
the gulf that we said is now open for exploration. We have done a lot 
to try, in my view, to bring in additional supply in terms of our 
energy pipelines.
  But we should not kid ourselves because we know today there are more 
than 60 million acres of public lands, both onshore and offshore, which 
have already been leased to the oil companies--60 million acres, far 
surpassing the acreage of ANWR, far surpassing any of the acreages 
being talked about now even on the gulf coast of Mexico that might be 
opened. So what is happening with all these public lands, resources of 
the United States of America under which lie significant reserves of 
oil? I would say there are huge opportunities there for oil and gas 
companies to go out and to develop the resources that are underneath 
those lands.
  I conclude by saying, first, let us be honest about oil shale and its 
possibilities. Let's not oversell to the American public that this is 
somehow a panacea for America's energy needs.
  Secondly, let's look long term, knowing there is going to be some 
pain but that we need to look long term at a new energy policy for the 
United States of America. As a parenthetical, I would say that is why 
these energy tax incentives we have been working on are so important 
for us to try and harness the energy of the Sun, the energy of the 
wind, the energy of biofuels, the energy of cellulosic and ethanol as 
we move forward on that frontier.
  Thirdly, as we look at short-term solutions to help, in some way, 
alleviate the pain all Americans are feeling today with respect to high 
gas prices, that we be realistic with respect to the solutions to that 
particular challenge we face.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. SALAZAR. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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