House and Senate Republicans picked up on President Bush's request to open up oil shale exploration in Utah and other domestic oil production options with two bills introduced Thursday. Each bill would remove the existing ban on the Interior Department from finalizing regulations to allow oil shale exploration on public lands. It would be a means to encourage companies to seek out producing oil in the West...
The Senate Republicans introduced the Gas Price Reduction Act of 2008, which also calls for oil exploration in the outer continental shelf, increase federal money for plug-in cars and increased staff for the Commodities Future Trading Commission. "Our bill can be summed up in four words: 'Find more, use less,'" said Sen. Alexander Lamar, R-Tenn., at a press conference Thursday with 20 Republican Senators, including Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah...
Bennett said Utah has a pilot project moving forward on state land that could prove as early as later this summer how technology works to produce oil shale...
But Chase Huntley, energy policy advisor for The Wilderness Society said oil shale development is a "cruel fiction on the American people, promising a false solution to high gasoline prices that instead would hand over potentially tens of thousands of acres of federal lands to oil shale speculators. "This bill falsely promises that oil shale will lower gasoline prices, when in fact the industry is years if not decades away from proving the economic viability, technical feasibility, and environmental safety of the technologies needed to squeeze oil from rock," Huntley said in a statement. Huntley said the technology to develop oil shale is not ready and its environmental impacts -- particularly how much water it needs to be developed -- are not understood. "Pushing the BLM to finalize rules governing commercial leasing and production of oil shale now is irresponsible," Huntley said...
Meanwhile, the Republicans from the House Western Caucus introduced the Americans for American Energy Act, which also removes the moratorium from the Interior Department...The House bill is more extensive than the Senate one and includes opening up oil drilling in the Arctic Natural Wildlife Refuge. The Senate bill purposely left that proposal out, Alexander said, because some Democrats have problems with it.
