Getting oil from sands and shale too destructive for some

With $100-per-barrel oil prices, talks of finding and extracting the black gold wherever it can be found in Utah and elsewhere is raising radars for environmental groups.

Even though any large-scale tar sands and oil shale development in Utah might be years away, the Nine Mile Canyon Coalition already fears that oil projects in the proposed Argyle Canyon Special Tar Sands Areas would "leave vast areas of land sterile and ugly, use more water than is readily available in this arid region and would pollute both ground and surface water for many miles downstream."

The public comment period for the so-called Tar Sands/Oil Shale Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) ends Thursday. This part of the process is being used only to identify where leasing government-owned land for sands and shale development might take place.

"I don't believe there's any way they can do it without total devastation," said Steve Tanner, chairman of Nine Mile Canyon's impact research committee.

Tanner grew up around mines and worked in the industry as a career. "I've seen the good, the bad and the ugly," he said. "There's ways of doing things correctly."

For Tanner, the closest method to his version of correct for tar sands and oil shale would still mean having to drill way too many holes and pumping hot water down them to release the trapped oil and then bring the product back to the surface. He said there isn't enough available water for that. There are also questions about removing mountain tops to get at it and where to store the leftover materials.

"That's total destruction," Tanner said.

Once a final environmental assessment is published, the Interior Secretary will meet with governors from Utah, Colorado and Wyoming to talk about whether there is sufficient interest and justification for moving forward with a leasing program, said Jim Kohler, chief of minerals for the BLM in Utah. He said rules would still need to be established that will govern leasing government land to drilling operations.

Kohler said predicting what environmental impacts may happen is premature.

"Until you have a specific proposal in front of you ... it's pretty hard to say what that development will look like," he said. Once a proposal to lease land for oil shale or tar sands development is brought forward, there will be another public comment period to consider details of the proposal.