BLM issues draft regs to open up 800 billion barrels of oil from shale

The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management published proposed regulations to establish a commercial oil shale program that could result in the addition of up to 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil from lands in the western United States.

The largest known deposits of oil shale are located in a 16,000-square mile area in the Green River formation in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Shale formations in that area hold the equivalent of up to 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Federal lands comprise 72 percent of the total surface of oil shale acreage in the Green River formation.

The oil shale management proposed regulations are available in the Federal Register at: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/pdf/E8-16275.pdf