Boomtown blues: a community history of oil shale booms in the Colorado River Valley
The routes of early surveyors and explorers and the mining and agricultural history of the valley are examined in detail as are the ethnic origins of family networks that emerged over generations and were affected by the first oil shale boom between 1915-1925 when major oil companies acquired ranchland, water rights, and oil-shale claims in Garfield County, Colorado. The first boom faded and community equilibrium and solidarity were regained during the depression. By the mid-1970s, major national and international forces again focused on Garfield County and its three trillion barrels of oil locked in shale. President Carter's push for energy self-sufficiency as the moral equivalent of war, and loans made by the synthetic Fuels Corporation for oil shale development, came into direct conflict with national environmental groups and federal environmental laws. Local ranching communities became urbanized boomtowns, especially after Exxon, USA embarked on the $5 billion dollar Colony Oil Shale Project. Less than two years later, on May 2, 1982, Exxon announced the immediate closure of Colony and threw 2100 people out of work and eliminated $85 million in annual payroll from western Colorado. Social and psychological community effects of the oil shale boom and bust are vividly chronicled here.
- Research Organization:
- Bowling Green State Univ., OH (USA)
- OSTI ID:
- 6822326
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Thesis (Ph. D.)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
29 ENERGY PLANNING
POLICY AND ECONOMY
BOOM TOWNS
SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS
COLORADO
OIL SHALE INDUSTRY
ENERGY SOURCE DEVELOPMENT
HISTORICAL ASPECTS
FEDERAL REGION VIII
INDUSTRY
INSTITUTIONAL FACTORS
NORTH AMERICA
USA
040800* - Oil Shales & Tar Sands- Economics
Industrial
& Business Aspects
294004 - Energy Planning & Policy- Oil Shales & Tar Sands
290200 - Energy Planning & Policy- Economics & Sociology