June 26, 2008
Senator Vitter said that 85 percent of the available area for exploration is off the table off shore. One hundred percent of the area available for exploration for prospective oil shale is off the table because there is a moratorium put in place by the Democratic Congress in the last session that says the Department of the Interior can’t even draw up the rules under which exploration will take place. Nobody is going to play a game in which there are no rules. So by preventing the drawing up of the rules for the leasing process they have made sure that there will be no exploration on federal lands with respect to oil shale.
Fortunately, in the state of Utah, there is some activity going forward; a pilot project which we expect will bring forth some oil this year, not at some future point, but this summer, because it is on state land. It is not under the jurisdiction of the federal government and it will demonstrate the proven technology that can produce oil shale. There are over two trillion barrels potentially available for oil shale. Even if you narrow that down to that which is technically available using present technology, and not anticipating any further progress in technology, there’s 800 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil in eastern Utah, western Colorado, and southern Wyoming. But the only demonstration project going forward, because of the moratorium, is that which is going forward on state land. In this bill we repeal that moratorium and make it possible for people to begin to examine the possibility of oil shale on federal lands, as well as just on the state lands.
When you raise this issue of leasing lands, we hear people who say, “Well, there are all these leases out there that are not producing. Why don’t we make people produce off of the existing leases before we give them anymore?” And they’re saying, “The oil companies are hoarding this. Let’s get a position of use it, or lose it.” That sounds very logical except that the federal law right now is use it or lose it. If an oil company leases federal land right now and does not start producing oil within the 10 year period of the lease, the lease expires and the land comes back to the federal government. The reason you’re not seeing oil on some of that land is quite simple, the oil isn’t there. They leased it in the hope that it would be there. They didn’t find it, so naturally they are not producing it.
With oil shale, we know the oil is there. We know the potential is there and no one is going to examine it until the rules are drawn up. In this bill we repeal the moratorium so the rules of the game can be laid down. Then billions of dollars will be invested to play the game and it will not just be on state land that we’re beginning to get at this oil. We can get up to 800 billion barrels relatively quickly with provable existing technology. It’s time we got going on that. It’s there for the taking, we need to take it.