BLM Land For Oil

The Bureau of Land Management is taking its public meetings on oil shale to Colorado, as the Interior Department takes a fresh look at an oil shale plan released by the Bush administration. That plan made about 1.9 million acres of public land potentially available for commercial oil shale development in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado and about 431,000 acres for tar sands leasing and development. The BLM kicked off its public meetings on the issue in Utah last week. The next meetings are Tuesday in Rifle, Colo., Wednesday in Denver and Thursday in Cheyenne, Wyo. The BLM has said oil shale resources in deposits in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming hold an estimated 1.5 trillion barrels of recoverable oil. Companies are researching commercially viable ways to extract it.