March 12, 2008

Help Slow Down Hasty Oil Shale Development!
Comments are due by March 20, 2008

The Bureau of Land Management is pursuing a program to lease out the rights to mine for oil shale across millions of acres in Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah .

Oil shale production is among the dirtiest and most environmentally degrading land uses that the West has ever seen. It involves either massive strip mining or bulldozing the entire landscape where extraction occurs. It requires huge amounts of electricity to wring petroleum products from the rock, which will likely mean major increases in polluting coal-fired power plants, with heavy impacts to global warming. In addition, BLM predicts that full-scale oil shale operations would use up 2 to 15 percent of the flow of the Colorado River system, a waterway that is already badly overused. Left behind is slag that leaches heavy metals and other toxic compounds into surface and groundwater supplies.

The BLM is proposing to sell the rights to dig for oil shale on millions of acres of public land without adequately considering impacts to sensitive wildlife and treasured landscapes. At risk are key habitats for sage grouse and desert elk as well as spectacular places like the Adobe Town and the Kinney Rim proposed wilderness areas in the Red Desert.

Speak out now against the destruction of western public lands in the name of oil shale!

Tell the BLM that a full-scale commitment to oil shale production should wait until after the oil industry proves that oil shale can be produced without unacceptable impacts to our lands, waters, and air quality. Tell BLM to adopt the No Action alternative and not move forward with commercial-scale oil shale leasing until results from the experimental Research and Development oil shale pilot projects become available.

Send your comments by March 20th to:

BLM Oil Shale and Tar Sands PEIS
Argonne National Laboratory EVS/900
9700 S. Cass Avenue
Argonne, IL 60439 

Or submit your comments electronically at http://osts.anl.gov.

For more information on oil shale development, read our latest newsletter at http://www.voiceforthewild.org/general/newsletter/theVoicefortheWild_Spring2008.pdf.

Thank you for speaking out against irresponsible energy development on our public lands!