One-year ban on oil shale regulations expires Time has run out on a congressional ban on issuing final regulations for oil shale development in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. The one-year moratorium on issuing the regulations expired Tuesday and efforts to extend it have failed. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has approved a plan to open nearly 2 million acres of public land to development and is expected to issue final oil shale regulations later this year. The agency has said it could be several years before commercial development occurs and that more in-depth analyses will be done as specific projects are approved. The shale in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming is thought to contain 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The catch is the technology to squeeze the oil out of the rock is still experimental and commercial production is likely at least a decade off....