Feds may have funds for shale plant cleanup

Associated Press

Federal royalties already in hand from gas wells on the Roan Plateau may be enough to pay for the cleanup of a former oil shale research facility on the south cliffs of the plateau. A draft analysis by the federal Bureau of Land Management estimates that cleaning up the Anvil Points facility in Rifle in Western Colorado will cost $4 million to $8.7 million. More than $10 million has been set aside from the federal royalties, BLM spokesman Steven Hall said.

Anvil Points was decommissioned in 1984 after operating for 40 years, sometimes under private management and sometimes under the federal government. The government is responsible for the cleanup, Hall said.

The BLM is also studying ways to deal with a 1,000-foot-long, 350-foot-high pile of spent oil shale below the defunct plant. It contains arsenic and other dangerous heavy metals. Government and private researchers have tried for decades to find economical methods of extracting oil from shale. Nationwide, an estimated 2.6 trillion barrels of oil are locked in shale, including 1.5 trillion barrels in the Green River formation, most of which is in Western Colorado.