"I find it disturbing that Utah imports oil from Canada tar sands, even though we have a larger tar sands resource within our own boundaries that remains undeveloped," Hatch said. "Why has Canada moved forward in leaps and bounds, while the United States has yet to take even a baby step in this direction?"

Experts testified that Canada now produces 1 million barrels of oil per day from tar sands, and that is expected to reach 2 million barrels a day.

According to Mark Maddox, a deputy assistant secretary for fossil energy, the Green River Formation — located where the three states come together — contains an estimated 1.8 trillion barrels of oil. It also constitutes more than 50 percent of the world's oil shale reserves, of which 80 percent are owned by the federal government.

Maddox said studies of the reserves indicate that more than 400 billion barrels of oil will be found in oil shale with concentrations greater than 30 gallons per ton.

And, he added, the technology to refine it exists.

"The failure of the government's efforts in the 1980s was not due to the failure of the resource, the technology or environmental problems," he said. "Economically it was simply too expensive."

Until now.

But the rosy future for eastern Utah is tempered by the reality that the federal government and industry invested in oil shale and tar sands in the 1970s only to abandon the project in 1982 because it wasn't economically feasible.

"We are aware of its potential to help provide for the nation's energy needs, but we are also aware of its potential to engender false hopes, exaggerated claims and unfulfilled promises," said Steve Smith, assistant regional director for the Wilderness Society.

Smith encouraged senators to consider entering a cooperative agreement with Colorado and Utah to examine the environmental impacts of all issues surrounding oil shale development, and to do it before federal monies are committed to the project.

Such a study, Smith said, affords residents of the impacted areas and Americans in general "an opportunity to become informed about the status, promise, risks, opportunities and impacts" of developing the resource.

"I hope that this time around, we will be more careful than we were the last time," he said.

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E-mail: spang@desnews.com