Water demand complicates shale prospects

By {screen_name}
Monday, November 29, 2010

It’s likely that the nation’s oil shale states have enough water to start an energy industry based on the rock, but it would soon have to compete with downstream demands, cities and towns and endangered fish, a government report says.

The Green River Formation of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming contains the equivalent of as many as 3 trillion barrels of oil, the Government Accountability Office said in a report issued Monday.

The report acknowledged that estimates of the need for water vary widely, depending on the nature of the technologies, some of them unproven, and because different approaches require differing quantities of water.

Read the full story in Tuesday’s edition of the Daily Sentinel.