Shell official confirms thirsty nature of oil shale, denies push to ‘corner water market’

A Shell Oil official confirmed Friday that the “in-situ” oil shale production the company is researching at its Mahogany facility near Rangely currently consumes about three barrels of water for every barrel of oil produced. But, he said, contrary to recent media reports on an environmental study of energy company water rights on Colorado’s Western Slope, Shell is not trying to “corner the market on water” in the Colorado and White River basins. “We’ve been working for quite a number of years to acquire a pretty broad diversity of water rights in different areas that will allow us to have the flexibility so that we can source water from different locations so that the impacts to the agriculture and the other historical and traditional users will be minimized,” said James Thurman, a government affairs manager for Shell. A report released Wednesday by Boulder-based Western Resource Advocates (WRA) cataloged more than 200 water rights held by six different energy companies with the potential to divert 7.2 million acre-feet and store up to 2 million acre-feet of Western Slope water. By contrast, the entire Denver metro area annually consumes less than 300,000 acre-feet of water...Colorado Independent