 Agricultural Impacts of Oil Shale DevelopmentNorman K. Whittlesey No 329646, Economics Statistics and Cooperative Services (ESCS) Reports from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service Abstract: Nearly 2 trillion barrels of oil are contained in the Green River oil shale formation of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. However, resource limitations of technology, capital, water and land, as well as great environmental problems of air and water quality, stand in the way of using this oil. Much of the water for oil shale development in Colorado, the area of richest oil shale deposits, would probably have to be diverted from agricultural uses. As much as 20 percent of irrigated farming in Colorado could be lost by such water diversion to oil shale use. However, irrigation losses to farming in Utah and Wyoming would probably be slight from oil shale development in those states. Careful planning could minimize declines in irrigation. In general, impacts on agriculture from land use for oil shale development would not be significant. Keywords: Community/Rural/Urban Development; Crop Production/Industries; Environmental Economics and Policy; Labor and Human Capital; Land Economics/Use; Livestock Production/Industries; Resource/Energy Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uerscs:329646 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Economics Statistics and Cooperative Services (ESCS) Reports from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service Contact information at EDIRC. |
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