Shilling For Shale

The High Country's own Virginia Foxx (R-NC) has got this high gas price thing all figured out: all we need to do is drill for oil shale deposits!

Those darn deposits are sitting in plain sight, right here in the good ol' USA. If we tap into these vast deposits, we'll never have to rely on the likes of scary people like this ever, ever again!

Per Foxx, the "American Energy Act", which she co-sponsored, will increase supply and lower gas prices by:

...opening deep water resources, the Arctic coastal plain and shale oil resources and by reducing the bureaucratic hurdles blocking construction of new refineries. It is estimated that these sources hold the potential to provide an additional 6.5 million barrels of oil per day.

Virginia! You've done it! B-b-but:

...Faced with rising energy prices, and concern over climate change, rather than disinvest out of oil, the US is going to start digging for more of it. But this time it’s oil shale, which is dirtier, and more energy intensive than conventional oil. Oil shale development also consumes vast amounts of water...
...
Critics of the scheme, along with Colorado’s Democratic governor, Bill Ritter, accused the Bush administration of rushing to develop oil shale at “bargain basement” rates, without accounting for its various impacts. Ritter said that oil shale, which would not produce oil until 2015 or 2016, would do nothing to help with high gasoline prices...

But isn't Colorado just rolling in water? It's not like the Colorado River is used to supply water to California or anything. So we can use the water in Colorado to dig for the oil shale there, yes?

...
The Colorado River Basin, an important source of water supply for Southern California, continued in drought conditions, having experienced below average runoff in seven of the last eight years.
...

With few exceptions, 16,000 feet is the maximum depth at which oil is found. Below that depth, only gas exists, because of the temperature of the earth. The United States has large areas of oil shale deposits, which are sometimes misconstrued as being a readily available resource. However, oil shale deposits are not the same thing as conventional oil fields. There are no effective methods for extracting crude oil, from oil shale. A variety of processes have been tried, and all have failed.

Party poopers. Reality has a way of doing that sometimes. We have to wonder why the High Country Media outlets which reprinted Foxx's press release apparently did not attempt to use the InterGoogles to find the information noted above. It took us all of 10 minutes to find it.