No matter how The Oil Shale Promise:

A RAND Corporation analysis prepared for the U.S. government, "Oil Shale Development in the United States,"(PDF file) describes the impact of building an oil-shale industry in the Green River Formation:

-- "All candidate areas for oil shale development in Colorado and Utah enjoy high-quality air and accordingly are classified as Class II areas under the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) provisions of the federal Clean Air Act."

- "An industry producing 3 million barrels of shale oil per day would annually generate over a billion tons of spent shale per year."

- "About three barrels of water are needed per barrel of shale oil produced."

- "Damage in the U.S. portion of the Colorado River Basin arising from elevated salinity is estimated at between $500 million and $750 million annually."

- "Oil shale operations will result in emissions of current Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-designated criteria pollutants (sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, particulates, ozone precursors, carbon monoxide) as well as small amounts of noncriteria pollutants currently on the list of air toxics covered by the Clean Air Act." [RAND Corporation, 2005]

The energy needs for oil shale development are immense. No matter how the rock is mined, it has to be heated to at least 700 degrees Fahrenheit to boil the kerogen into an extractable fuel. A "strategic-scale" industry, producing one to three million barrels per day, would require vast energy resources supplied by multiple new power plants, most likely powered by fossil fuels such as coal or natural gas, and producing millions of tons of greenhouse gases and other pollutants a year.

The Colorado River basin is already in a water crisis due to the double whammy of global warming-induced drought and a population boom. Oil shale development would suck up vast amounts of water -- as it worsens global warming. Full-scale production of oil shale would consume and contaminate about 200 million gallons of water per day.

As James Hamilton, a professor of economics at University of California, San Diego, wrote in 2005, "If oil shale does turn out to be the resource of the future, then our problems are only beginning."

At the same time Bush wants to slash royalties on the dirtiest kind of oil in the U.S. to 5%, royalties in Canada are being raised on Canada's dirty oil from Tar Sands from 25% to as high as 40%.

Stelmach unveils new regime that will mean a potential windfall of $1.4-billion

Starting in 2009, royalty rates will be increased across the board - for example, in the oil sands, rates will start rising when the price of oil is higher than $55 a barrel, with a new maximum of 40 per cent of a company's net revenue, up from a fixed rate of 25 per cent.

I hope our Democratic Congress isn't going to be stampeded by the hysteria over high energy prices into this sleazy scheme to extract the world's dirtiest oil. I hope they won't ignore the drastic environmental price Americans would have to pay to extract oil from shale.

Crossposted at D-Kos