Tar Sands Mining Hits the American West

A plan is in place to open the first commercial mine in Utah.

In June more than 100 U.S. and Canadian scientists calling for a moratorium on the mining of tar sands, the sticky oil deposits whose extraction has blighted huge swaths of the landscape in Canada. Tar sands, which can produce 20 percent more greenhouse gas emissions in total than even conventional oil resources, should be 鈥渙ne of the first fuel sources we avoid,鈥 the group wrote. And yet, even now, with an oversupply of oil and natural gas鈥攁nd with the consequences of global warming increasingly glaring鈥攊t appears we simply can鈥檛 help ourselves. Tar sands mines, and all they bring with them, have arrived in the United States. 

Tar sands, also known as oil sands, require intensive processing to produce usable crude鈥攊t can take two tons of sand to produce just one barrel of oil鈥攁nd the expense of extracting and refining that oil (and the pollution the process entails) has historically kept most of it in the ground. However, beginning in 2000, rising oil prices and calls for North American energy independence set off a tar sands boom in Alberta (not to mention an endless debate in this country about the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry Alberta鈥檚 tar sands oil to the States). Fifteen years later the industry has cleared or degraded nearly two million acres of boreal forest, created toxic tailings ponds and other waste, and become Canada鈥檚 fastest-growing greenhouse gas emitter. And now it鈥檚 looking south. 

In July Utah鈥檚 Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining clearing the way for the opening of this country鈥檚 first commercial tar sands mine, PR Spring, which is owned by a Canadian company called . And PR Spring is 鈥渢he tip of the iceberg,鈥 according to Dan Mayhew, the chair of the Sierra Club鈥檚 Utah chapter鈥攋ust one of several tar sands mines, in varying stages of development, that have sprouted on eastern Utah鈥檚 Tavaputs Plateau, which sits atop an estimated 20 billion to 32 billion barrels of recoverable oil. In the meantime, Alabama and Mississippi .

At a moment of growing public consensus that it鈥檚 time to move away from dirty energy, the decision to open up canyon country to the development of what many consider the dirtiest energy source of all sends a decidedly contradictory鈥攊f not perverse鈥攎essage. 鈥淸This region] holds an incredible amount of fossil fuel energy,鈥 says Mayhew, 鈥渁nd it鈥檚 all in tar sands or oil shale.鈥 (Separating oil from shale rock is an even more carbon-intensive process that the oil industry hasn鈥檛 quite figured out how to make commercially viable鈥攜et鈥攖hough that hasn鈥檛 stopped it from sniffing around the vast deposits of oil shale in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming.) 鈥淚f the fuels are made available,鈥 adds Mayhew, 鈥渢he amount of carbon that could be emitted is staggering鈥濃攁s much as 48 billion metric tons from the oil shale alone, according to . 

If there鈥檚 a lesson to be learned from what tar sands mining has done to the landscape in Canada, the Utah state government and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management have chosen to ignore it鈥攂oth entities have yielded up thousands of acres of land to leasing for potential tar sands development. The only sop the state has thrown so far to environmental groups is to require that U.S. Oil Sands implement at its PR Spring mine. The results of that monitoring will be closely watched because PR Spring is something of a field test for U.S. Oil Sands鈥 proprietary extraction technology, including what it describes as a 鈥済ame-changing,鈥 鈥渘on-toxic鈥 citrus-derived solvent. 鈥淭his will be the best, environmentally responsible oil sands project that has ever been built,鈥 (U.S. Oil Sands did not respond to requests for comment.) 

鈥淵ou can put lipstick on a pig, but it鈥檚 still a strip mine,鈥 says Rob Dubuc, an attorney for Western Resource Advocates who represented the Utah environmental group in protests against the project. 鈥淭o make claims that the mine and the processes are environmentally benign is absolutely ludicrous.鈥 

Equally ludicrous is the notion that the United States can maintain credibility in the global clean energy discussion while simultaneously enabling the oil industry to exploit dirtier resources we don鈥檛 even need. The only rational move is to consider the United States鈥 tar sands as an opportunity for something this country has never been very good at: resisting temptation.