I know that my readers will be surprised that I didn’t watch the State of the Union speech by Obama until it was aired at about midnight, and then I slept through most of it. Fortunately I did receive the text from my Free Press editor, so I was able to respond to his comments in a piece that will be published Friday.

Instead of watching, I attended an oil shale forum at CMU. The Math and Science Center, who recently received a grant from Chevron, wanted to present a balanced look at oil shale. Presenters included Jeremy Boak, a Colorado School of Mines professor who hosts an annual oil shale conference at his university; Randy Udall, an expert on peak oil and investing in alternative fuels; and Jim Spehar, a local columnist and former Grand Junction mayor and county commissioner. They each had a very different look at the industry.

Boak, a geologist, spoke to the science of oil shale, including highlighting the difference between shale oil and oil shale. Udall spoke to the folly of expecting widespread commercialization, pointing out the fact that it is always just 10 years down the road, and will always be just 10 years down the road. Spehar discussed the impacts on communities of boom and bust cycles. Unfortunately Spehar assumed that his audience understood what the word “infrastructure” means to governments, and got pretty lost in the weeds of how tax revenues flow to cities and counties.

This forum was taped, and will be available within the next week at the math and Science Center’s website. If you watch the video you’ll never think of potatoes and oil shale in the same way again.

Homework

Math and Science Center

KREX Report on Oil Shale Forum

The Colorado Environmental Coalition sponsored an event in the KAFM Community Room in Grand Junction last night. The people packed into the room were treated to some amazing photography mostly taken from the open door of a small plane as it first flew over Canada’s Boreal Forest, then the Tar Sands project so hyped in TV commercials promising to create American Jobs. (I’ve often wondered how a project in Canada could create jobs in the U.S. Now I know the answer, but it scares me to death.)

The power of the presentation by Garth Lenz, an internationally honored photographer from Canada, was in the contrast between the natural beauty of the forest and the complete environmental destruction at the development sites. These projects are so huge that they can be seen by the naked eye from space. Imagine a landscape that is mounds of black gunk for as far as the eye can see from the elevation of a low flying plane, surrounded by toxic unlined pits leaching carcinogens into major Canadian rivers and evaporating toxins into the air so that rain can pollute even more lungs and rivers.

The Keystone Pipeline is the connection to jobs in the U.S. It would pipe billions of barrels of oil from the Canadian Tar Sands through the breadbasket of America to refineries in Houston. That pipeline has been the subject of many recent hearings and protests.

The Lenz presentation was followed by a sometimes humorous presentation by Randy Udall on the potential for development of Colorado’s Oil Shale.  Udall has challenged any Colorado resident to heat their home with oil shale this winter. He’ll pay them $1,000 for doing it, deliver the shale, and remove the toxic remains after the oil has been burned. The homeowner can expect to shovel 700 pounds of shale into their furnace each day, and shovel 600 pounds out at the end of each day. Udall says the negotiations with the EPA are up to the homeowner.

Homework

Colorado Environmental Coalition

Garth Lenz Website

Transcanada Promotion of Pipeline

Nebraska Newspaper Describes Keystone Controversy

Youtube of Randy Udall talking about peak oil