Here is the meeting schedule for the Bureau of Land Management's new environmental study of oil shale and tar sands development on federal lands in the West. The scoping meetings will be held from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. in each city:

l Today, Salt Lake City, Little America Hotel, 500 S. Main St.

l Wednesday, Price, Holiday Inn, 838 Westwood Boulevard

l Thursday, Vernal, Westin Plaza Hotel, 1684 West Highway 40

l Friday, Rock Springs, Wyo., BLM Field Office, 280 Route 191

l Jan. 18, Rifle, Colo., Garfield County Fairgrounds Meeting Room, 1001 Railroad Ave.

l Jan. 19, Denver, Marriott Denver West, 1717 W. Denver West Boulevard

l Jan. 20, Cheyenne, Wyo., Holiday Inn, 204 W. Fox Farm Road

Two hearings are set for today to 4 p.m. and again from 7 to 10 p.m. at the Little America Hotel, 500 S. Main St. Similar hearings are scheduled for Price and Vernal on Wednesday and Thursday. Meetings in Colorado and Wyoming will convene from Friday through Jan. 20. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 requires the Bureau of Land Management to develop what is known as a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement that would further aid an oil shale and tar sands leasing program now under way.

The regions under study for oil shale development are the Uintah Basin in Utah, the Piceance Basin in Colorado, the Washakie Basin that straddles Colorado and Wyoming and the Green River Basin in Wyoming. The Energy Policy Act mandates that the BLM settle on final regulations for a commercial oil shale program by August 2007.

For tar sands, the planning includes sections of the Colorado Plateau in Utah.

In the process, BLM land use management plans in the three states will have to be amended. The scoping meetings are a step toward ensuring any leases granted on federal lands for oil shale and tar sands development account for environmental as well as economic and social concerns.

The vast amount of trapped oil - actually kerogen, a waxy hydrocarbon that hasn't undergone the geologic heat and pressure necessary to create petroleum - is only a potential resource. The BLM's new leasing program allows developers to receive federal permits to proceed only if they can can conduct acceptable research and development and demonstrate their endeavors would be cost-effective while also observing U.S. environmental protection laws.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, was a key proponent of the new law's provisions aimed at reviving U.S. oil shale and tar sands development, which went bust in the 1980s.

In the run-up to the bill's Aug. 1 passage, Hatch said that while it would be years before the oil shale resource could be on the market, the bill would send a message "to everyone, including [the Department of the] Interior, that we're tired of messing around."

Hatch's message actually has been circulating since the beginning of the 20th century. Since then, more than a dozen experiments have yielded oil from Western shale and hundreds of headlines predicting earthshaking booms just around the corner - yet none of them was a success.

Until the 1980s, the only known way to extract oil was by heating marl to around 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The heavier hydrocarbons that are produced are then further processed into "syncrude" used to make diesel or jet fuel. A ton of rock yields about a barrel of oil, or 42 gallons.

No one is certain at what point that process, called retorting, becomes economically viable. In the 1980s, when oil was around $40 a barrel, equivalent to about $80 a barrel today, retort-style shale extraction failed the profitability test.