{"id":3474,"date":"2011-05-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coloradowildlife.org\/uncategorized\/blm-oil-shale-scoping-mtgs-held-may-3-and-4-in-colorado-2\/"},"modified":"2011-05-05T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-05T00:00:00","slug":"blm-oil-shale-scoping-mtgs-held-may-3-and-4-in-colorado-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coloradowildlife.org\/blm-oil-shale-scoping-mtgs-held-may-3-and-4-in-colorado-2\/","title":{"rendered":"BLM oil shale scoping mtgs held May 3 and 4 in Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry\">\n<p>BLM held public scoping meetings on May 3 and May 4 in Rifle and in Denver, respectively, \u00a0in its &#8220;process to take a fresh look&#8221; at commercial oil shale plans that were announced in 2008.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>CWF made public comment &#8212;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<pre>Background: Secretary Salazar had announced the \"fresh look\" earlier\nthis year at to the 2008 regulations.  Under the 2008 regs, 2 million\nacres of western federal public lands would be open (eligible) for\ncommercial oil shale leasing.  BLM has published a Notice of Intent to\nPrepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) governing oil\nshale resources on BLM  lands in the Piceance Basin (and in Utah and\nWyoming).\n\nIn January 2007 BLM issued 5 RD&amp;D (Research, Demonstration &amp; Development)\noil shale leases to 3 companies within the Piceance Basin\nincluding Shell.  These lessees were granted the ability to expand their\nrespective 160-acre leases to 5,120-acre commercial development leases\nafter conversion from the RD&amp;D status.  A 2nd round of RD&amp;D lease\napplications was solicited by Department of Interior on November 3, 2009. \nAfter submitting proposals, two companies were nominated - Natural Soda\nand ExxonMobil -- to conduct RD&amp;D on 160-acre leases (which could be\nexpanded to 640 acres upon meeting criteria set by Secretary Salazar).  \nAt this time, these nominations are going through the BLM legal process.\n\nThe obvious question is why move forward at all with any commercial\nleasing before results of round 1 RD&amp;D and round 2, assuming it goes forward,\nare forthcoming and demonstrate technical feasibility for commercial \nscale oil shale production, water use projections, etc.    Our CWF position \nhas been exactly that: it is premature to conduct any commercial development leasing.\n\nWater estimates continue to appear to be 3 barrels of water for each\nbarrel of production. Companies consistently have stated that determining \ncommercial feasibility is at least 20 years off.  As you know, this also is \nvery important wildlife habitat in the Piceance that has been leased \nextensively already for gas development. (CWF mapped mule deer severe winter \nrange, elk winter concentration and severe winter range areas, and greater \nsage grouse ridge areas for our report on NW Colorado published in January 2010.)\nThe number of future  wellpads projected by gas companies in the Piceance Basin \nis alarming, exacerbating access issues, lack of quality experience in an\nindustrialized zone, as well as destruction of habitat.\n\nSome companies have extensive private holdings in the Piceance.  They\nclaim that although within the oil shale formation, the private lands they\nown are in the thinner less promising areas.\n\nThe US House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee majority intends \nto push for commercial leasing.  Apparently, they do not view RD&amp;D findings as a prerequisite.<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BLM held public scoping meetings on May 3 and May 4 in Rifle and in Denver, respectively, \u00a0in its &#8220;process to take a fresh look&#8221; at commercial oil shale plans that were announced in 2008. &nbsp; CWF made public comment &#8212; &nbsp; Background: Secretary Salazar had announced the &#8220;fresh look&#8221; earlier this year at to &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3474","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-news","7":"anons"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradowildlife.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3474"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradowildlife.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradowildlife.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradowildlife.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradowildlife.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coloradowildlife.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradowildlife.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradowildlife.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradowildlife.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}