Grand Junction Blog

One tightly held secret of western Colorado and eastern Utah is the huge amount and wide variety of harvestable energy held below the ground here.

In fact, the oil shale here holds the potential of more oil than the oil fields of western Texas. Of course getting the crude oil separated from the shale is a unique challenge, but the energy demands of a mobile world and country are sure to motivate the development of ways to profitably do that. The last few years have seen a significant effort in doing that in a ‘green’ way also.

The wide-open stretch of rolling, sagebrush-plugged adobe and rock stretching from Green River, Utah, to Rifle, Colorado is exactly that area. The stretch along the cliffs across two states is locally referred to as Energy Alley, a run along Interstate 70 that could be the most important 150 miles in America, extending from the uranium-rich lands of western Colorado and eastern Utah to the steep oil shale escarpments near Rifle, Colorado. The stark landform is known in Utah as the Book Cliffs and Colorado as the Bookcliffs. Go figure. As long as you’re saying it and not writing it, you’re safe. It holds an unparalleled range of fuels and minerals.

There is no resource on Earth to equal that of the kerogen tightly bound to the marlstone of the Green River Formation that runs below the surface of western Colorado and eastern Utah and emerges above ground near Rifle. The kerogen of oil shale alone in western Colorado is estimated to potentially result in the equivalent of 1.5 trillion barrels of oil. Kerogen, left from an oil shale harvest, is an excellent transportation fuel, good enough to fuel jets, tractor-trailers and the family car.

To give perspective, in 2005 the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre in London estimated that 944 billion barrels by then had been drawn from the Earth since the dawn of commercial drilling.

Ah, but there’s more.

The compressed sands below the surface of western Colorado’s Piceance Basin are estimated to hold about 41 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This resource has only been scratched. Production from the basin today provides for only 3 percent of the 22 trillion cubic feet of natural gas used yearly in the United States alone.

The coal resources of what is known as the Uinta Coal Region remains deep below the surface of western Colorado, beyond the reach of even the most advanced energy-harvesting technology. Geographically this is eastern Utah and in Mesa and Delta counties in Colorado. The Colorado River bisects the Uinta coal region, estimated to contain 23 billion tons. Most of that coal is buried too deep to reach by any current methods, leaving about 11 billion tons believed to be harvestable.

The United States in 2008 used 1.2 billion tons of coal, and though consumption levels slipped slightly to increased use of natural gas, coal still enjoys price-stability advantages over natural gas. The industry also can double up by using mines for carbon-sequestration projects, said Christopher Carroll, coal geologist for the Colorado Geological Survey. In 2008 the United States used 1.2 billion tons of coal, even though consumption levels slipped slightly to increased use of natural gas. Coal still enjoys price-stability advantages over natural gas.

Coal generates more than half the nation’s electricity, is at the center of debate over pollution and greenhouse gases. The demand for coal, especially clean-burning coal, is not going to subside anytime soon. The energy industry does not turn it’s attention on a dime.

Colorado coal mines and environmental groups are working to capture the estimated 5.5 trillion cubic feet of methane trapped in the region’s coal seams. This boosts the bottom line and increases safety for the miners, yet harvesting the gas. Methane is a gas that can asphyxiate miners as well as ignite and explode.

And yet more.

Carnotite unearthed in the West End of Colorado’s Montrose County and eastern Utah was milled in Grand Junction, Colorado and nearby small towns. Some of it found its way to Los Alamos, N.M., presumably into Fat Man and Little Boy, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since the infamous Three Mile Island fiasco, uranium has slipped significantly in attention, but it is well known that the atomic energy in uranium has too much potential to be ignord forever. Twenty percent of the nation’s electricity is generated with nuclear power, much of it with demilitarized uranium. Once that supply runs out, nucleur plants from around the United States and the world must find other sources to fuel reactors.

How much uranium is buried beneath the sandstones of the local area known as Canyon Country has not been estimated. Collectively the states of Colorado, Utah and Arizona are ranked third in the nation, behind Wyoming and New Mexico, with the nation’s largest known uranium reserves. Get out your atlas. Notice anything about those five states?

Local Grand Valley institutions such as Mesa State College (as well as nation-wide) are taking advantage of the fact the region basks 300 days a year in sunshine to generate electricity from solar energy.

One electricity utility and water supplier are researching generating electricity from falling water.

Homeowners and again, Mesa State College, are trying to limit energy costs by tapping the geothermal potential local Earth to heat water to cool and heat buildings.

Windmill companies are investigating the wind resources of the south Grand Mesa.

With the current demand for jobs and employment, coupled with the attention to national energy demands, our region braces for the inevitable attention we’re going to get. After years of resisting energy development, Colorado’s current governor Bill Ritter finally saw the light, apponting a new energy advisor that realizes the inevitable surge in attention and development. Of course the ultimate challenge is to integrate ‘green technologies’ so as to have as little permanent and deleterious effects on this land.

Read it here