On Wednesday, The Colorado Independent reported that Chevron was pulling out of oil shale development in western Colorado.
“Chevron has notified the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Department of Reclamation, Mining and Safety (DRMS) that it intends to divest its oil shale research, development and demonstration lease in the Piceance Basin in Colorado,” the company announced Tuesday. “While our research was productive, this change assures that critical resources — people and capital — will be available to the company for other priorities and projects in North America and around the globe. We will work with the BLM and DRMS to determine the best path forward, timing and other issues.”
This comes just weeks after the House passed the PIONEERS Act, which included H.R. 3408 – a bill that pushed for oil shale development and research as a method to fund the transit bill. Yet, as we all know by now, oil shale has failed to become a viable, commercially-sound energy resource and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said it would not produce any revenue.
[The CBO] projected that Boehner’s bill would, over 10 years, leave the highway trust fund $78 billion in the red, and the Interior Department is looking at slashing the amount of land available for oil shale research to 462,000 acres.
While Chevron recognizes that oil shale is not worth the millions of dollars in wasted research and development, others, including Rep. Doug Lamborn do not get this.
“Oil companies have been trying to pull the sword from the stone for nearly a century. Oil shale has no King Arthur,” said Matt Garrington of the Checks & Balances Project. “Chevron’s decision to pull out of oil shale is yet another reason why [U.S. Rep. Scott] Tipton [R-Colorado] and Lamborn should quit saying that melting rocks into oil will somehow fund critical repairs to our roads and bridges.”
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