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Sierra Club Lawsuits

Sierra Club Highlights Global Warming Impacts of Destructive Oil Shale and Tar Sands Development in the Arid West

Case Updates:

June 29, 2009

On June 15, 2009, Sierra Club and its allies filed an amended complaint in their lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management for opening up over two million acres of public land in the West to destructive oil shale and tars sands development. Sierra Club amended the complaint to highlight the proposed dirty fuels projects’ impact on global warming.

Oil shale and tar sands development is extremely energy intensive. The vast energy inputs required for extraction and refining of oil from oil shale and tar sands may produce up to four times more greenhouse gas pollution than conventional oil production. Development is likely to rely heavily on coal-fired power and will require electricity from an estimated ten new coal-fired power plants, emitting millions of tons of greenhouse gas pollution each year. Oil shale and tar sands development also requires a lot of water, and large amounts of energy will be needed to deliver the scarce resource to the arid West, resulting in more global warming pollution. Transporting and burning the liquid fuels will also emit more greenhouse gas pollution and worsen global warming. 

Oil shale and tar sands development is a dirty and destructive practice that will exacerbate global warming. Increased greenhouse gas emissions will worsen drought in the arid West and indirectly harm communities and threatened wildlife in the region.

January 23, 2009

On January 16, 2009, Sierra Club and allies filed suit against the Bush Administration for recklessly opening up two million acres of public land in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming to commercial oil shale development – an extremely destructive, energy and water intensive process of strip-mining and heating oil-soaked rocks to extract refineable petroleum.

Specifically, environmental groups are challenging the Bureau of Land Management’s recent approval of 12 revised land management plans that opened up the two million acres for oil shale leasing, and the Department of Interior’s recently issued, flawed regulations governing commercial leasing of oil shale, that permit and encourage such leasing at far lower rates than any other petroleum product.

Local elected officials have also spoken out against Bush’s oil shale policy for the West, stressing that related technology remains largely unproven and rapid oil shale development would destroy local landscapes and ecosystems, worsen global warming, and deplete scarce water resources in the arid West.

For more information on the detrimental impacts of commercial oil shale development on human health and the environment, see Sierra Club’s press release here.

Details and Documents: