Oil shale is considered a leasable solid mineral under the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920. The BLM manages oil shale leasing, research and development leasing, and production, and performs other administrative duties related to oil shale production from federal lands in the western United States .
In August 2005, the U.S. Congress enacted the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (Public Law 109-58). In Section 369 of this Act, also known as the “Oil Shale, Tar Sands, and Other Strategic Unconventional Fuels Act of 2005,” Congress declared that oil shale and tar sands (and other unconventional fuels) are strategically important domestic energy resources that should be developed to reduce the Nation’s growing dependence on oil from politically and economically unstable foreign sources. In 2008, the BLM released a Programmatic EIS for oil shale and tar sands that amended existing RMPs in Wyoming and other states. The only areas of Wyoming addressed in that Programmatic EIS were the Washakie and Green River Basins in the southwestern part of the state.
Oil shale has been described as occurring in thin, low-quality beds in the Eocene Tatman Formation in the central Bighorn Basin. Oil shale resources in the Bighorn Basin are not considered economically feasible to produce using mining or in-place production of kerogen, due to the relative thinness of the oil shale beds, thickness of the overburden, and extremely poor quality of any oil shale. There are an estimated 27 million barrels of undiscovered oil in the Bighorn Basin. At present, due to a lack of commercially valuable resources, no oil shale is leased on BLM-administered land in the Planning Area. Based on these resource values, the BLM did not amend existing plans for the Planning Area for oil shale leasing under the Programmatic EIS for Oil Shale and Tar Sands Resources (BLM 2009f), nor did the BLM make lands in the Planning Area available for applications for oil shale leasing.
Because there is no oil shale leasing in the Planning Area, the BLM has not identified management challenges.