WASHINGTON - Energy company executives told a House subcommittee on Thursday that Colorado, Utah and Wyoming could become the next Saudi Arabia if they can find a way to extract the billions of barrels in oil shale, a porous rock containing petroleum.
By tapping into oil shale, supporters say, the United States could replace all trans-Atlantic oil imports by 2025.
But they need help from the federal government, which oversees 80 percent of the land where the oil deposits are found.
A key official from Colorado urged Congress to take care, however, and make sure to avoid another boom and bust like the one that hit the state 25 years ago.
The United States has done little studying of oil-shale development since, cautioned Russell George, Colorado Department of Natural Resources executive director. "We need to get on with it," he said.
Previous methods of extracting energy from oil shale have included setting off deep underground nuclear explosions, which rendered the product too radioactive to use, and mining.
As they consider bills that set the nation's policy regarding which energy sources to encourage, many in Congress are pushing for ways to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil.
Some - including several Republicans from Western states - want the United States to aggressively develop ways to tap oil shale and tar sands.
Much of the U.S. supply is concentrated in the Green River Basin in northwestern Colorado, northeastern Utah and southern Wyoming.
It is estimated that deposits in Colorado alone contain more than 1 trillion barrels of oil, four times as much as Saudi Arabia.
Thursday, representatives from energy companies developing oil-shale technology said they are poised to be able to process oil shale in environmentally sensitive and economically viable ways.
They urged Congress to encourage its development and expedite a way for them to get started. The Bureau of Land Management already is accepting research-and-development lease applications for land in the basin.
"We can safely say of our future with regard to oil and gas, it has yet to see its brightest days," subcommittee chairman Rep. James Gibbons, R-Nev., in response to their testimony.
But others have questions.
Environmentalists and farmers are wary because of stories of water and land contamination from aggressive coal-bed methane extraction, another source of energy found in the West. They worry about charging ahead without carefully surveying the potential environmental consequences of harvesting oil shale.
Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., whose district includes oil-shale rich land, has voted against fast-tracking its development, saying he is concerned about the environmental impact.
"We're certainly supportive of developing our energy resources," Salazar said in an interview. "But we have to do it in a responsible way."
Colorado residents in particular are wary because of their last experience with oil-shale development in the 1970s. In part because of the energy crisis then, the federal government leased tracts of land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and pre-empted local regulations to help oil-shale companies that promised to create thousands of jobs and develop a new source of oil.
It all went bust, however, when the oil-shale industry collapsed after the oil market went soft in the 1980s.
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George, who told the subcommittee he grew up "in the shadow of oil-shale development," hopes the federal government will take steps to prevent that boom and bust from happening again, by requiring careful testing of promising technology, providing enough federal financial support for local governments and encouraging private investment over several decades.
The government also must consider that the former oil -hale boomtowns have become popular places for retirees and wealthy vacationers.
"That cannot be underestimated if accelerated development is to resume," George said in written testimony.
