April 12, 2005 (Washington, DC) - In a statement delivered before the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources today, The Wilderness Society’s Steve Smith urged the panel to follow a “careful and deliberate approach” in formulating government policy on oil shale development.
“We recommend that, before Congress considers any commitment of federal public lands or resources, the Department of the Interior prepare a programmatic Environmental Impact Statement in close cooperation with the States of Colorado and Utah, and local government officials,” said Smith. Pointing out that the federal government’s most recent comprehensive analysis of the prospects and problems of oil shale development was completed 25 years ago, Smith said that the technology and economics of oil shale have changed drastically, and that Congress should “look before it leaps” in encouraging the full blown commercialization of unproven technologies.
Smith noted that a study by the now defunct Congressional Office of Technology Assessment in 1980 indicated that a commercial-size oil shale industry in Colorado and Utah would require vast amounts of water, and posed unique environmental hazards. And he said that Colorado’s most recent experiment with oil shale development, in the early 1980s, was a failure, leaving communities on the western slope of Colorado feeling betrayed for years afterward.
“We really need to take a long, hard look at all aspects of this technology, before we make major commitments of federal financial and natural resources to it,” said Smith.
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