SFGate.com: "World's biggest oil field"--in Colorado

"Alternative-energy" may not be the key to energy independence. It may just be a matter of developing some of the currently less accessible supplies of petroleum:

Underneath the high, scrub-covered rangeland of northwest Colorado is the world's biggest oil field. Getting the oil out of the ground, however, is one of the world's biggest headaches.

The area's deposits of oil shale are believed to be larger than all the oil reserves of the Middle East. But past attempts to get at this oil locked in tarry rock have cost billions of dollars and raised the prospect of strip-mining large areas of the Rocky Mountain West.

Now, as the federal government makes another push to develop oil shale, Shell and other companies say they have developed techniques that may extract this treasure with much less environmental impact . . .

Oil shale deposits in Colorado and neighboring areas of Utah and Wyoming are estimated to contain 800 billion recoverable barrels, three times larger than Saudi Arabia's proven reserves of conventional crude, and the equivalent of 40 years of U.S. oil consumption.

Update: New oil has also been discovered in the Gulf of Mexico, and Lebanese Bloggers discusses "The bain of rising petrostates and their coming demise."

Tags: Oil, shale, Colorado, Saudi Arabia, energy independence