Caution warranted on oil shale

With crude-oil prices inching toward $60 a barrel earlier this month, renewed talk of tapping Colorado’s vast oil-shale resources wasn’t surprising.

This time, federal lawmakers, including Sens. Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar of Colorado, are wisely urging caution in possible shale development to avoid the dislocations of the frenetic oil-shale boom and bust of the early 1980s.