Northeastern Utah, home to recalcitrant oil deposits ripe for fracking, is edging into the national energy debate as yet another frontline battle against fossil fuel extraction.
This time it is a substance called oil shale, which is even harder to extract crude from than regular shale, according to former Senator Mark Udall, who calls the process “squeezing oil from a stone.” Yet that is exactly what Estonian-owned Eesti Energia plans to do.
“Oil shale is sedimentary rock containing bituminous minerals that can be mined and processed to release petroleum products,” he wrote in an August 5 editorial in The New York Times. “Not to be confused with shale gas, which is a major American industry, oil shale has never been successfully commercially exploited in the United States, even though over half of the world’s known oil shale deposits are in the Colorado River Basin.”