Matheson adds to shale bill Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, won a huge round Monday in the fight to allow oil-shale development in Utah — even as environmental groups redoubled efforts against it. Matheson persuaded House Democratic leaders to include in a bill a provision that would lift a ban on developing oil shale on federal lands in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado. The bill is needed to prevent a government shutdown. The language would formally lift a moratorium that Congress imposed last year to prevent the Bureau of Land Management from issuing final rules for oil-shale leases there. Matheson's language would allow commercial oil-shale leases in any state that also approves allowing them, and Utah politicians generally favor that. Matheson similarly persuaded leaders last week to put an identical provision into a Democratic energy bill. However, that bill has only a long shot at eventually becoming law....