From The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel (Dennis Webb):
Anton “Tony” Dammer, senior vice president of Red Leaf Resources Inc., said a spike in oil prices related to concerns about Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s response to unrest there shows how vulnerable the United States is because of its reliance on foreign oil. “He’s holding us up. He just cost us $20 a barrel. I mean, come on, we can’t do this anymore,” Dammer said at Friday’s Energy Forum & Expo at Grand Junction’s Two Rivers Convention Center.
Dammer is the former director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves, and he founded the DOE’s Unconventional Fuels Program. At Red Leaf, he’s helping pursue a process of producing kerogen from shallow oil shale deposits in northeastern Utah. Red Leaf has shale leases covering 17,000 acres of state school trust lands, and the company plans to undertake a 9,500-barrel-a-day project there that will employ 200 people, Dammer said. Utah welcomes oil shale development, Dammer said.