To hear Bush touting Western oil shale as the answer to $4 per gallon gasoline, as he did again this week in the Rose Garden, you would think it was 1908...or 1920...or 1945...or 1974. Every couple of decades, the immense reserves of the oily rock under Colorado and Utah re-emerge as the great hope for our energy future.

Bush and his fellow oil shale boosters claim that if only Western communities would stand aside, energy companies could begin extracting more than 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil from domestic shale deposits. If only the federal government immediately offered even more public lands for development, the technology to extract oil from rock would suddenly ripen, oil supplies would rise and gas prices would fall. If only.

Since the 19th century, we in the West have been trying to extract oil from the vast oil shale riches that lie under our feet. It is no easy task, and past efforts have failed miserably. Commercial oil shale development would require not only immense financial investments but also an undetermined quantity of (scarce) water from the Colorado River basin and the construction of several multibillion-dollar power plants.

Sometimes it seems that we are getting close to overcoming these barriers. But each time we near a boom, we bust. The last bust, the infamous "Black Sunday" of 1982, left Western communities holding the bill long after the speculators, Beltway boosters and energy companies had left.

This time, though, the technologies that companies such as Shell Oil are developing are far more promising. Thanks in part to a research and development program that Congress created in 2005, energy companies are starting to devise a way to heat the rock that holds the oil and force the oil out of the ground. Still, that oil would not come easily.

It would take around one ton of rock to produce enough fuel to last the average car two weeks.

Furthermore, energy companies are still years away - 2015 at the earliest - from knowing whether this technology can cost-effectively produce oil on a commercial scale. To reach the 2015 goal, we must avoid the pitfalls that have trapped us in the past: the speculation and hype, the shortage of water and power, and the failure to plan for environmental and social impacts. Otherwise, we risk another massive bust.

Unfortunately, the administration's approach carries none of the Western wisdom acquired over the past century. In a frenzied attempt to move a failed agenda in its last days, the Bureau of Land Management is trying to organize a fire sale of commercial oil shale leases on public land.

This sale would be a tragic case of putting the cart before the horse.Howis a federal agency to establish regulations, lease land and then manage oil shale development without knowing whether the technology is commercially viable, how much water the technology would need (no small question in the arid West),how much carbon would be emitted, the source of the electricity to power the projects, or what the effects would be on Western landscapes?

The governors of Wyoming and Colorado, communities and editorial boards across the West agree that the administration's headlong rush is a terrible idea. Even energy companies, including Chevron, have said we need to proceed more cautiously on oil shale. With more than 30,000 acres of public land at their disposal to conduct research, development and demonstration projects (in addition to 200,000 undeveloped acres of private oil shale lands they own in Colorado and Utah), they already have more land than they can develop in the foreseeable future.

So why is the president hurrying to sell leases for commercial oil shale development in the West's great landscapes? A fire sale will not lower gas prices. It will not accelerate the development of commercial oil shale technologies.

My family has farmed and ranched in Colorado for five generations. We have seen this speculative spirit before. It is the same spirit that sweeps through gold, silver and uranium markets in the run-up to devastating busts. It is the same spirit that drives the West's worst water and land grabs.

So to the boosters who think they have found the answer to our energy crisis, I say: We welcome you to our quest to develop oil shale on a commercial scale. But first let's put the horse back in front of the cart and all start pulling in the same direction. A reckless approach that heightens the risk of an oil shale bust would only set us back.

Ken Salazar is a Democratic senator from Colorado. This article originally appeared in the Washington Post.