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So far I have not seen any of the Drill here, drill
now, pay less
bumper stickers promoted by Newt
Gingrich, but doubtless it's just a matter of time, since
the slogan has become something of a mantra in certain
right-thinking circles.
Gingrich was a Georgia Republican who served as Speaker
of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1998.
Lately he's been co-writing some tolerable speculative
fiction (i.e., what might have happened if Gen. Robert E.
Lee had listened to the sensible advice of Gen. James
Longstreet at Gettysburg), and last fall Gingrich set up an
outfit called American Solutions for Winning the
Future.
It's supposed to be bipartisan, and Gingrich notes that
current political discourse is dominated by sound bites
and commercials so short they can't communicate anything
complex.
Now let us ponder the complexity of oil shale, part of
his Drill here, drill now, pay less
proposal.
Gingrich informs us that there is a lot of potential fuel
buried in the Green River Formation of Colorado, Utah and
Wyoming, but liberals on the Senate Appropriations
committee voted to block environmentally sound development
of oil shale in Colorado
and Congress recently voted
to make it illegal to develop U.S. oil shale
resources.
But Congress did not ban the development of oil shale. If you have oil shale on private land, you're free to develop it, subject of course to regulations concerning employee safety, air and water quality and the like.
What did Congress do? Much of the oil shale, about 80 percent, is on public land administered by the federal Bureau of Land Management. A 2005 law required the BLM to prepare an environmental impact statement and leasing regulations before leasing any oil shale land. Congress has voted not to fund that process.
Without an EIS and without regulations, the land can't be leased for development. To be sure I understood this, I called Glenn Vawter, executive director of the National Oil Shale Association in Glenwood Springs.
He said that is the situation, and that oil-shale development is perfectly legal on private lands.
He wants leasing of some public land so that new
technology can be explored. The private shale lands are
generally where there are surface outcrops which would be
mined the conventional way, by moving a lot of rock and
heating it to release the kerogen (the waxy stuff that is
the oil in oil shale). The public lands have deeper, richer
layers where the in-situ processes (which involve
liquefying the hydrocarbons underground) could be
developed.
That's a fair argument. But it's also a more complex
than the one Gingrich presented, which concluded with
Yet, buried in a Department of Interior appropriations
bill passed in December 2007 was an amendment that
prevented establishing regulations for leasing land to
drill for oil shale
and the Senate Appropriations
Committee rejected an amendment by Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO)
to allow oil shale drilling.
The clear implication is that all you have to do is
simply drill
in oil-shale country and the oil will
flow to the refineries and the gas pumps, when in reality
there's much more to it than mere drilling. The kerogen has
to be extracted from the surrounding rock, liquefied and
processed before it can be refined.
In other words, with Drill here, drill now, pay
less,
Gingrich has given us one of those sound bites
and commercials so short they can't communicate anything
complex.
If only Gingrich would stick to writing fiction that is labeled as such.
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