The nonpartisan budget watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense reported this week that billions of taxpayer dollars have been risked over the last century on "failed oil shale experiments." The group says the government needs to stop subsidizing oil shale development on public lands.
* The Taxpayers for Common Sense released a report recently in which it stated that nearly $7 billion in subsidies were available to oil companies to commercialize oil shale in the 1980s, yet oil shale never became commercially viable.
* The report comes as the U.S. Department of Interior considers a proposed plan to promote research, demonstration and development of oil shale and tar sand resources on BLM land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The plan, as announced in November, would make nearly 700,000 acres of public land available for research.
* Under the proposed plan, federal lands that would be open to oil shale development would first be open to research, demonstration and development leases. In addition, the BLM could issue a commercial lease after the lessee satisfies the condition of the RD&D lease and meets the federal regulations for conversion to a commercial lease, the BLM reported.
* According to the Taxpayers for Common Sense group, in 2008 the Bureau of Land Management set royalty rates for oil shale development on public lands at 5 percent -- less than half the rate set for oil and gas development on public lands.
* The group also takes to task a bill introduced in November by Republican Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, which allots money to carry out five years of oil shale, shale extraction and water utilization research and development activities.
* House Bill 6603, also known as the Hall Bill, directs the Energy Secretary to provide grants or enter into cooperative agreements or contracts with eligible entities regarding the research and development of oil shale resources.
* "To this day, oil shale technology has never been successfully demonstrated on a large scale," the Taxpayers for Common Sense group wrote in its report. "Many attempts to produce at the commercial level have occurred, but high costs and volatility in the markets have led to plant failures in the past, resulting in the loss of millions of taxpayer dollars."
* The Taxpayers for Common Sense senior program director, Autumn Hanna, stated this week that Hall's bill will "prematurely (push) an industry into the marketplace by propping it up with federal subsidies." Hanna said that the bill is a bad risk for taxpayers.
* Oil shale -- not to be confused with the commercially viable shale oil and shale gas -- is a process by which rock is superheated for several years and then refined into fuel, the Taxpayers for Common Sense explained.
Written By: Susan Graybeal
Original Publication URL: http://news.yahoo.com/group-says-billions-dollars-risked-oil-shale-speculation-232300461.html
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