What's the story with the supposed huge amounts of oil (in shale I believe) in Utah and Colorado? Is there anything to that?
BLM has said the United States holds significant oil shale resources underlying a total area of 16,000 square miles. This represents the largest known concentration of oil shale in the world and holds an estimated 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
Oil Shale Development in the United States, Prospects and Policy Issues
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG414.sum.pdf
Oil Shale and Tar Sands Leasing Programmatic EIS Information Center
http://ostseis.anl.gov/
Shale oil is still very difficult to refine into anything usable. The hot market is tar sand. There is a huge program to mine and refine tar sands in Canada.