By Sharon Sullivan, CEN Contributing Reporter
Grand Junction homebuilder, Bonnie Peterson, talks excitedly about energy, and Colorado’s potential to solve the nation’s demands for it. Four years ago Peterson and Kathy Hall, Western Slope representative for the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, organized what has become an annual event: Grand Junction’s [1] Energy Forum and Expo.
“Western Colorado has all sorts of energy resources: gas, oil through shale - who knows where we’ll go with that, coal, a ton of forest if we ever get to the point we can develop biomass, sunshine, uranium,” Peterson said. “We want to provide opportunities for people to be educated in all of these arenas.”
Approximately 1,000 people attended the fourth annual free Energy Forum and Expo, February 27, at the Two Rivers Convention Center. The event featured a panel of energy-related speakers and vendors, mostly associated with the oil and gas industry.
“This region is the breadbasket of energy opportunity - fossil fuel as well as the new energy economy,” said Reeves Brown, executive director of Club 20, a civic and political organization, who helped host the event. “We think it’s smart to try and position this region and this community on the forefront of evolving energy technologies.
Most of the speakers said while alternative energies need to be explored, they will not replace oil and gas anytime soon.
Keynote speaker Michael Economides, a chemical and petroleum engineer, chairman of a natural gas firm, and author of “The Color of Oil,” was back this year by popular demand of the largely pro-oil and gas industry crowd. Economides’ speech often mocked the press, Venezuelan
president Hugo Chavez, and especially former Vice-President Al Gore for his views on global climate change.
The press wants to talk about solar and wind which may account for more than 1 percent of energy needs, Economides said. “Get it (solar) out of your mind. Your electricity bill will be $10,000 a month. That’s what solar energy will do. There are no alternatives to hydrocarbon energy sources in the foreseeable future.”
“That’s preposterous,” said Lou Villaire, a salesman with Atlasta Solar, one of two solar companies exhibiting at the Expo which featured 59 vendors. “He’s employed by the oil and gas industry, but he puts himself up as an independent researcher.”
“Ten-thousand dollars? He needs to come and talk to some of our customers,” said another Atlasta salesman Andy Whipple. What Economides fails to mention, Villaire said, is that solar would be more competitive if the government took away the huge oil and gas subsidies. Economides seemed to backpedal slightly when asked to comment further on the “$10,000 a month” solar bill. “Solar is good. With a subsidy we can make everything possible. If government gives away money, that’s different,” Economides said.
The country’s energy needs can’t be solved until transportation issues are addressed, Economides said. If trends continue, by 2011, the U.S. will be importing more oil than it uses for transportation. But ethanol is not the answer to increased needs for fuel, Economides said. Ethanol is the “largest scam in energy history,” because you end up with a negative energy balance producing it, according to Economides.
Former Congressman Charlie Stenholm, spoke at the forum in favor of ethanol, although he said he didn’t always believe in it. “I opposed ethanol. I couldn’t explain to my oil and gas (constituents) why we should subsidize the competition,” Stenholm said. But he changed his mind about ethanol. “If corn is more valuable in the marketplace as fuel as opposed to food, that should determine where it goes,” Stenholm said. Stenholm also mentioned the potential of oil shale for solving the nation’s appetite for oil. “You are sitting on the OPEC of the world with your oil shale production right here in Colorado,” Stenholm told the audience.
Tracy Boyd, of Shell Exploration and Production Company expounded on the topic of oil shale. Shell’s Mahogony Research Project seeks to extract oil from shale by gradually heating up the rock underground over a four-year period. The company is studying oil shales’s commercial feasibility through its Research, Development and Demonstration project in northwestern Colorado.
”The reserves here (in Colorado) are so rich,” with significant potential for solving the nation’’s energy needs, Boyd said. Seventy percent of the oil shale lies beneath federal lands. Someone from the audience asked Boyd about the project’s water consumption - a concern of many that live in western Colorado’s desert region. Oil shale water consumption is unknown, Boyd said. “Opponents use that against it. They are right, but over time we’re getting a handle on it. Three-to-one (three barrels of water to one barrel of oil production) is the number we use for general planning purposes.
”There are higher estimates but we in the industry don’t buy those numbers.” Shell has acquired water rights on the Yampa, Colorado and White rivers. “So when one basin is low, that year we can switch off to another river’s basin, Boyd said. Another person from the audience asked if the future price of oil would support the cost of oil shale development, which isn’t expected to take place commercially for several years. “I can’t answer that. I really don’t know,” Boyd said.
George Glasier, of the Canadian-based Energy Fuels Inc. spoke about his company’s plans to develop the region’s vast deposits of uranium for nuclear power. Uranium mining and milling in Colorado was discontinued in the 1980s due to declining uranium prices. The meltdown at the Three Mile Island reactor in Middletown, Pa., in 1979 and the 1986 explosion at the Chernoby plant in Russia factored in the market decline of uranium. World leaders plan to double the amount of energy it derives from nuclear, in the next 20 years, Glasier said. These days touted by proponents as “clean” energy, companies like Energy Fuels is poised to revive uranium mining in Colorado.
But that doesn’t take into consideration the radioactive waste generated by the uranium milling.
All the waste generated by the U.S. would fit on a football field 30 feet high, Glasier said. “Granted it’s highly radioactive, but (the waste) is not great in quantity.” Disposing of the tailings (the sandy waste material after the milling process) is key, Glasier said. “You want no leakage for thousands of years. You have to prevent the slurry from seeping into the ground water.”
Deciding what to do with the high-level radioactive waste is a problem, a political problem, Glasier said.
We’ve been working on the Yucca site (a proposed nuclear waste repository in Nevada) for 20 years. Nevada still doesn’t want it,” he said.
