“Bleak” Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Just because it’s not lush green as those areas east of the Missouri River, the vast vistas are beautiful in their own right.
By the way, the amount of water needed to get the shale oil out doesn’t readily exist unless you want to ship in really big chunks of Arctic ice!
Being from Oklahoma -- the home of miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles -- I quite agree.
But, I suspect, most would consider Western Wyoming "bleak".