For decades, many Utahns have been tantalized by a mirage of fabulous wealth from tar sands. It's a dream that never quite came true.
When the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74 caused an energy crisis, many planners looked to unconventional petroleum deposits - including Utah's tar sands - as a way to achieve American "energy independence." If they had been right, Utah would have become this country's Saudi Arabia.Tar sand is a sedimentary rock rich in bitumen, a residue of lighter crude oil. Often it is in the form of oil-impregnated sand. Sometimes it is at or near the surface in black bitumen outcrops. Other deposits are deeper underground.
In the early 1980s, the federal government's Minerals Management Service estimated Utah's tar sands reserves at between 23.85 billion and 45.6 billion barrels of oil. That's "b" as in Bill Gates.
More than 50 deposits are known throughout the state. The largest 11, which Congress designated for leasing purposes as "special tar sand areas," or STSAs, are in east-central Utah: Carbon, Uintah, Duchesne, Grand, San Juan, Garfield, Wayne and Emery counties.
An environmental impact statement prepared in 1984 by the Bureau of Land Management says the Tar Sand Triangle STSA of Wayne and Garfield counties contains half of Utah's total tar sands resource.
Deposits that would be easiest to develop are the Asphalt Ridge/White Rocks STSA in Uintah County, P.R. Spring STSA in Uintah and Grand counties and Sunnyside STSA in Duchesne and Carbon counties.
"These deposits contain thick intervals of sand richly impregnated with bitumen," says the environmental report. In some places surface mining would be practical. In a big development, the operation would be like "that of a large, open-pit mine."
The Asphalt Ridge/White Rocks STSA, the region where Park Guymon's project is planned, has estimated reserves of 1.22 to 1.31 billion barrels of oil reserves.
Deeper deposits could be extracted through schemes involving a "fire front" heating the bitumen so it liquefies and can be pumped out.
In the 1984 report, the BLM analyzed a "high commercial production" scenario in which 365,000 barrels per day would be produced from federal tar sand reserves in Utah, with 190,000 barrels from surface mining and 175,000 barrels from in-situ. "The largest work force would be required during 1995, with about 7,000 construction workers and 4,500 operation workers," it adds.
The study also examined a "low commercial production" blueprint, with tar sands projects delivering 83,000 barrels per day by 2005. Peak construction employment would be in the year 2000, with 5,500 workers. The biggest work force in the extraction industry, 3,100, would be in 2005.
Even the low-production plan proved too expensive. To begin with, the embargo and its energy crisis ended by the middle 1970s.
Start-up costs, the difficulty of reaching deposits, poor quality of oil, reclamation expenses and other factors combined to make a barrel of fuel extracted from tar sands more expensive than a barrel of fuel made from crude oil purchased overseas.
Guymon and the companies that back his plan are not interested in turning tar sands into gasoline. They want to use it for paving material, and they believe the costs are reasonable.
His techniques won't turn Utah into another Saudi Arabia. But they may provide a steady supply of high-quality and inexpensive paving asphalt.