Feds to Squeeze Oil From Stone

hosted.ap.org — The Bush administration wants to set the stage before leaving office for developing oil shale, rocky deposits in the western U.S. that could eventually yield 800 billion barrels of oil, according to government estimates. Oil shale may be the largest untapped source of domestic oil, dwarfing the quantity of oil available offshore and on federal lands currently off-limits. However, it is very expensive to extract, because it requires energy to bake the rock and pump the molten oil to the surface. A government program to subsidize its development in the 1980s was shut down when cost figures came in at several times the then-market price for oil. There are also big environmental concerns about the possible effect on water, wildlife and public lands.

Read Full Article »