per Statement of Anu K. Mittal, Director Natural Resources and Environment Testimony The United States of America has the worlds largest oil reserves, in the trillions of Barrels!! If we develope it we can kiss the national debt goodby!!

UNCONVENTIONAL OIL AND GAS PRODUCTION Opportunities and Challenges of Oil Shale Development Statement of Anu K. Mittal, Director Natural Resources and Environment Testimony. Before the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, House of Representatives. Not to Be Released Before 9:30 a.m. EDT Thursday, May 10, 2012 GAO-12-740T United States Government Accountability Office Our October 2010 report found that oil shale development presents significant opportunities for the United States. Potential opportunities associated with oil shale development include increasing domestic oil production and socioeconomic benefits. • Increasing domestic oil production. Being able to tap the vast amounts of oil locked within U.S. oil shale formations could go a long way toward satisfying the nation’s future oil demands. The Green River Formation—an assemblage of over 1,000 feet of sedimentary rocks that lie beneath parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming—contains the world’s largest deposits of oil shale. USGS estimates that the Green River Formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil, and about half of this may be recoverable, depending on available technology and economic conditions. The Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, estimates that 30 to 60 percent of the oil shale in the Green River Formation can be recovered. At the midpoint of this estimate, almost half of the 3 trillion barrels of oil would be recoverable. This is an amount about equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves. The thickest and richest oil shale within the Green River Formation exists in the Piceance Basin of northwest Colorado and the Uintah Basin of northeast Utah. Figure 1 shows where these prospective oil shale resources are located in Colorado and Utah. • Socioeconomic benefits. Development of oil shale resources could also yield important socioeconomic benefits, including the creation of jobs, increases in wealth, and increases in tax and royalty payments to federal and state governments for oil produced on their lands. Our October 2010 report did not attempt to quantify these potential socioeconomic benefits because of current uncertainty surrounding the technologies that might be used to develop oil shale resources, which would influence the ultimate size of a future oil shale industry.