A Colorado parcel may bring forth next energy boom

Tucked into a ravine, and hidden behind ridges standing like stony sentinels, is the site of Shell Oil Co.’s experimental, highly anticipated 30-year project to unlock oil from vast underground beds of rock.

Here, on this sweeping plateau in western Colorado, the Bush administration has fixed its hopes for a long-mentioned energy boom: oil shale, which the US Department of the Interior praises as an ”energy resource with staggering potential.” Members of Congress have described the region as the Saudi Arabia of oil shale.

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