Kohler said predicting environmental impacts is premature. "Until you have a specific proposal in front of you," he said, "it's pretty hard to say what that development will look like."

Once a proposal to lease land for the development is brought forward, another public comment period will be held to consider details of the proposal.

In addition to the Nine Mile Canyon Coalition's early concerns over Argyle Canyon, the group stated this week that vast areas of Nine Mile Canyon are being proposed for tar-sands leases. A coalition statement depicted a worst-case scenario, in which part of the Nine Mile area would one day resemble Kennecott's Bingham Canyon copper-mine operations in the Salt Lake Valley.

Nine Mile Canyon is home to exposed panels of ancient Indian rock art. Watchdogs say the rock art is already at risk of being destroyed by heavy truck traffic associated with current and future proposed oil and gas development.

In the past, the financial returns have been too low and the costs too high to explore extracting oil from sands and shale. But the high price of oil these days has changed that.

A process known as "destructive distillation" is being used to get oil from sedimentary rock known as shale. Evidence of deposits has been found in parts of Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. The Interior Department has said that the Green River Formation — a geological formation located in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming — is estimated to contain over 2 trillion barrels of oil, more than the world's current known oil reserves.

Federal officials estimate another 11.8 million barrels of oil are in the Uinta Basin area, locked in oil sands or sandstone. Critics have the same concerns for getting the oil out of tar sands as with shale operations — water usage and environmental impacts.

Existing BLM plans for six areas in Utah could be changed to accommodate oil-shale and tar-sands development. Changes will depend on what comes out of the environmental impact statement, which the 2005 Energy Police Act directs the Secretary of the Interior to complete before deciding how to handle a commercial leasing program of federal land that has been identified for shale and sands projects.

There's also uncertainty over the price of oil or advances with extraction technology associated with tar sands and oil shale.

"Whatever happens, it will be a very, very expensive capital-intensive process to get at the resources and address environmental concerns," Kohler said.

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com