Procrastination

I have to write a paper. Not just any paper. A paper on oil. Oil shales in particular. And if you want to get even more specific, oil shale beds in Utah.

I chose to write this paper. I could be writing it on diamonds, or emeralds, or even oil in a different part of the world, but I figured this would be the most pertinent.

Oil shales have been out of the [local] news for a while, now that gas prices have dropped. But that doesn't mean they're not there. And that really doesn't mean that they're not quietly being assayed and pondered, and mused over and making little "cha-ching" sounds to anyone who doesn't care about lopping the tops of hills off and destroying precious and rare ecosystems.

They will make it back into the headlines. But probably before it's too late.

According to this BLM site, the US holds the largest concentration of oil shale (five times the oil reserves in the mid east), more than 70% of this lies on federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, and in Utah alone there are 12 to 19 billion barrels of oil.

YIKES!

Although the University of Utah is looking into more asthetic ways to mine this oil, they have yet to find an economically viable solution. And if I have learned anything from my most FAVORITE class (Economical and Geophysical Exploration), it's that these old farts don't give a rat's ass about anything but money.

But you probably already knew that.

So writing this paper has become a bit of a headache. It's making me so sad to think about what could potentially happen to our state and the great west. Hopefully our new prez won't see it through. He's really the only one who can stop it now.

I guess the only reassuring thing about this whole mess is that most of it is in/around Vernal. So who cares, right?