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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database
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End_Page 612------------------------------
The potential for commercial development of shale oil in the United States exists principally within the vast acreages of publicly owned oil shale lands in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. The resource that formed as varves in four lake beds during the Tertiary occur today as oil shale deposits in the Piceance basin, Colorado, the Uinta basin, Utah, and the Green River-Washakie basin, Wyoming. It is estimated to be a resource that could yield approximately 1.2 trillion bbl of shale oil from the Piceance basin alone. The authority to lease these public lands for development is defined by the Mineral Leasing Act (MLA) of 1920.
In addition to technologic breakthroughs to support more effective and less environmentally stressful development, the future development of commercial quantities of oil from this publicly owned resource is dependent on (1) administrative decisions to lease oil shale lands for development and (2) amendment of the MLA that would modify existing development practices.
Appropriate legislative and policy decisions can provide strong incentives for the commercial development of publicly owned oil shale deposits in the 1980s.
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