shale development is a little problematic. If you mine it, you’re talking about strip mining most of western Colorado, and there’s the question with what to do with all the waste rock. Then there’s the question of where to get the water for processing, in what is essentially a desert. There are some new methods for extracting the oil in place, but they’re still in the testing stage.
What killed shale development was not the government, but the eighties oil crash. After sinking so much money into shale, only to have it become economically unfeasible overnight, the oil companies have been reluctant to invest in it again.
These GREENIES are IDIOTS...NOTHING we do will satisfy them so why try?!!! Drill ANWR, build nuclear and screw them.
NEW YORK—U.S. environmental advocates are nervous that record crude oil prices will lead to a boom in production of fossil fuels like motor fuel from coal, Canada’s tar sands, or shale in Colorado that would emit more planet-warming gases than conventional oil.
“High oil prices are a double-edged sword,” said Deron Lovaas, an automobile expert at green group the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Rising crude prices were once a no-brainer for U.S. greens; the steeper the price, the more likely car-pooling and public transportation would rise in the world’s largest oil consumer and eventually tame demand.
But it is no longer an easy reaction as global demand rises as cars and highways multiply in places like China and India while global reservoirs of quality crude oil that refiners prefer to process become harder to find and drill.
“Another potential downside is that we drop our vigilance in terms of understanding that we need to have enforceable federal programs when it comes to ... fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions,” said Frank O’Donnell, president of the nonprofit Clean Air Watch.