While the serious environmental impacts of oil shale deposits generate a fair share of controversy, the fact remains that as a plentiful natural resource, they'll always be suggested as a potential energy source. But it shouldn't set environmentalist alarm bells ringing that the Department of Energy has begun an investigation into developing carbon sequestration technologies around coal shale operations—at least not yet.

The DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's  cooperative study with the American Shale Oil Company seeks not to establish a shale oil industry, but to simply create and refine practices for mitigating the carbon emissions created in oil shale processing. The sequestration strategy is to put the CO2 back where it came from, according to LLNL:

The shale that remains in the ground after the oil is extracted could be used as a storage place for the carbon dioxide that is created during the extraction process.

Though it will likely bolster interest in the domestic energy resource, the study just as easily might also reveal that the expenses involved in sequestering emissions from the carbon-heavy fuel will make it economically inviable.

With current oil prices and the increasing availability of clean energy sources, it will take a seemingly miraculous technical breakthrough to make oil shale attractive. I've been tough on oil shale in the past, but if significant breakthroughs do occur, that can simultaneously mitigate its high cost and environmental impact, then there's no reason not to seriously consider it as a potential domestic resource in a nation that aspires to energy independence.