Chevron admits Oil Shale Will Use Huge Amounts of Western Water.

[Divernan]

One of the largest oil companies in the world has been forced in court to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about one of the key environmental impacts of developing oil shale in the arid West. Namely, it will consume an enormous amount of water in a region where drought and climate change are already stressing available water supplies.

Chevron USA, in legal filings in a case brought by the conservation group Western Resource Advocates, has admitted that to meet a goal of developing a half million barrels of oil from sedimentary rock in northwest Colorado it would need 120,000 acre feet of water a year. That’s enough to meet the needs of 1 million people per year.

Chevron and Western Resource Advocates reached a settlement agreement and filed it last week with the Colorado water court. Under the agreement Chevron is allowed to keep its water rights for six years and then must go back to court to keep them beyond that period. It also agreed to provide Western Resource Advocates with five documents that detail how much water it would need for oil shale development and how the water would be used.

That’s how the truth came out. “This legal case puts to bed the argument of whether current oil shale plans will use large quantities of water,” said David Abelson, a policy advisor to Western Resource Advocates. “Now the debate for decision makers is whether allowing oil shale development to use enormous quantities of water in a strained Colorado River Basin is acceptable.”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/08/3457738/chevron-oil-shale-water/

[Warpy]

1. Clue Phone: the west no longer has enough water to supply them

Winter snows are not falling and the summer monsoon has fizzled every year but one since 1992. There is no water they can use that isn't already being used for drinking water and agriculture.

That technology is either going to mean shale trains headed for the Great Lakes and refining there or it's going to be strangled in its cradle, too expensive and without the one essential resource it relies most heavily on.

[AuntPatsy]

2. Though it is our bread and butter, I am very vocal though no one I know responds, perhaps

All of us are aware and yet allow our creature comforts to take precedence......here in South Texas the pay checks are booming, constructing new housing is at an all time high, the bigger the vehicle the better one expresses that seemingly never ending cash flow even as our surviving water supply's are diminishing rapidly while what is left is in my opinion poisoning us all.....

Ahhhh the human race, our own worst enemy.....

[Autumn]

3. Some areas here are already in a fucking drought.

Oh fuck, it these fuckers make me sick, they won't be satisfied until they kick aside the last fucking corpse.

[Divernan]

4. "the last fucking corpse" as in: people - Soylent Green is people!

[earthside]

5. To be clear: oil shale is not the same as shale oil.

There actually isn't even any 'oil' in oil shale ... it is a precursor to oil called kerogen.

And, as far as I know there still isn't a way to effectively, efficiently or economically extract kerogen from oil shale.

So, if there ever gets to be genuinely serious talk about developing oil shale, well, then you know we are in really big trouble and have started falling off the plateau of Peak Oil production.

[Divernan]

6. Right - the link explains in more detail.

But the article quotes Chevron as having a goal of developing a half million barrels of oil from sedimentary rock in northwest Colorado, so apparently they have found a way to profitably mine it.

I'd like to see similar admissions of fact re the amount of water used in fracking. There is frequent reference to hundreds of tankers full of water and chemicals hauled in to each fracking well, but I wonder whether there are public records kept of amounts of water used at each well.

[Trailrider1951]

13. It depends on the state

Some states make all well records public and some states release little information. Here in Texas, it's the Texas Railroad Commission requires each well operator to file a completion report, if the well produces oil or gas. Fracking information can be found there on page 2 of such reports.

http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/

Some states hold that well information other than the production and location of the well is confidential, and not released to the public. Then, you must get your information from private companies such as IHS, Drilling Info, etc.

[AllyCat]

7. No. No water for you. No. Just say NOOO!

[DeSwiss]

8. Will require huge amounts of western water....

...and not a shred of morality nor conscience.

- A bonus if you have more of the former and none of the latter:

K&R

[JDPriestly]

9. This is a major development especially for California.

Our water is rationed. That is that we are limited in watering our lawns with sprinkler systems to only two days a week. We had a total of about 6 inches of rain in the 12 months ending June 30, 2014. That is far too little. We cannot afford to lose water to fracking. But of course the oil companies want to do it.

[rickyhall]

10. And how a half a million last? A week? A month? Ridiculous waste of water.

[defacto7]

11. May I add

a ridiculous waste of irretrievable water, polluted beyond reuse.

[WCLinolVir]

12. Guess what else uses huge amounts of water? The NSA.

They use an obscene amount of water to cool their servers. 1.2 million gallons a day. In Utah no less. An environmental disaster.

[amandabeech]

14. How much of that water can be reclaimed? n/t

[WCLinolVir]

15. Not sure, data is secret.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/20/3416407/nsa-utah-drought/
This link has some info. Apparently the NSA does not want us to know.