In the United States a large supply of

oil sands Oil sands, tar sands, crude bitumen, or bituminous sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. Oil sands are either loose sands or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and wate ...

are found in Eastern

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

. These deposits of

bitumen Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term a ...

or heavy crude oil have the ability to generate about 12 to 19 billion barrels from a number of prominent sites.

History

Since the early 1900s the oil sand deposits have been extracted mainly for the use of road pavement. Later, in the 1970s, oil companies began to experiment with the deposits in the hope of using it for their benefit. These experiments ended in the late 1980s when the technologies being used were concluded inefficient and too expensive.The Utah Tar Sands.
Oil Sands Recovery Technology. Nevtah Capital Management Corp., 7 July 2008. Web. 12 Oct. 2009 Recently, oil companies have again become interested in Utah's oil sands. Now that conventional oil is becoming harder to find, oil sands have become an alternative fuel source.

Production sites

Utah's oil sands are made up of several different deposits all consisting of different amounts of heavy or crude oil. These sites are mostly found on public lands. They are mainly close together and many are found within the Uintah Basin of Utah, which is a section of the Colorado Plateaus province. Some of these sites include Sunnyside, P.R. Spring, Asphalt Ridge, Hill Creek, Circle Ridge, Circle Cliffs, White Rocks, and the Tar Sand Triangle, the highest deposit.

Tar Sand Triangle

The Tar Sand Triangle is located in Southeastern Utah and covers an area of . It is located between the Dirty Devil and Colorado Rivers in Wayne and Garfield Counties. The Tar Sand Triangle is the largest deposit of oil sands in the United States known today. It contains about 6.3 billion barrels of heavy oil, but is thought to have originally held more. At one point the Tar Sand Triangle could have consisted of 16 billion barrels of heavy oil, almost as much as in Utah today.HUNTOON, J.E., P.L. HANSLEY, and N.D. NAESER
"The Search for a Source Rock for the Giant Tar Sand Triangle Accumulation, Southeastern Utah."
AAPG Bulletin 83 (1999): 467-495. Web. 14 Oct. 2009

References

{{coord missing, Utah Bituminous sands Oil fields in Utah

History

Production sites

Tar Sand Triangle

See also

References