| Description |
This report summarizes recent research and policy documents to provide a brief overview of the current state of oil shale development in the U.S. West. Recent high crude oil prices, anticipation of a peak oil crisis, and a focus on developing domestic sources of fossil fuel have contributed to a renewed interest in mining and processing the oil shale found in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado to yield a crude oil substitute. The development of a commercial-scale industry remains a tenuous proposition due to a number of technical, environmental, regulatory, and economic challenges. The viability of oil shale development relies on major assumptions regarding the industry's ability to overcome these and other obstacles. Recent federal policy designed to encourage development of oil shale and the vast scale of the resource mean that oil shale development will remain a possibility in the U.S. West as long as the nation continues to rely heavily on fossil fuels for energy. As a result, it is important to understand the issues that affect the development of a western oil shale industry. Because the oil shale industry remains a hypothetical prospect, much of what is written about it is necessarily speculative and is published in non peer-reviewed venues. This report highlights the assumptions that inform current assessments about the viability of oil shale production. It identifies a number of questions that need to be answered before the public and policy makers can begin to make informed decisions about the costs and benefits of a commercial-scale oil shale industry in the West. We conclude there are at least fourteen unanswered questions about the viability of oil shale production at a commercial-scale. There is room for considerable skepticism about most of them, as they involve unproven technologies or what seem now to be political improbabilities. On the other hand, oil shale has clearly gained momentum in recent years and several of the industry's key drivers fossil fuel dependency, the peak oil challenge, and rising crude oil prices remain in place. The body of this report is organized into three sections: an assessment of technological, environmental, and infrastructural challenges to oil shale production; a survey of the economic context; and finally, an overview of the current policy context. A complete bibliography is provided at the end. |
