The two counties together produced 24 billion cubic feet of natural gas in 1997, counting coal-bed methane and ordinary natural gas. "In 2002 it was 105 billion cubic feet," he said. In 2006, the amount was around 98.5 billion cubic feet.

Isaacson added, "Carbon County and Emery County are now on the map in the oil and gas industry."

Oil sands

According to Isaacson, the Canadian province of Alberta has been producing a million barrels of oil per day from oil sands, a gummy bitumen substance.

"A Technical, Economic and Legal Assessment of North American Heavy Oil, Oil Sands and Oil Shale Resources," prepared in September 2007 by the U.'s Institute for Clean and Secure Energy, says Utah has more than half of the United States' oil sands. Proven reserves in Utah are about 11.6 billion barrels, while the total for the country is 22.5 billion barrels.

More speculatively, Utah has about 32.3 billion barrels and the country has 76.2 billion.

However, Canada has 1.7 trillion barrels awaiting development, with much of it in surface deposits, according to the assessment, one of whose authors is Isaacson. "Canada has one of the greatest oil reserves in the world," it adds.

Utah oil sands are being mined today on a small scale. Uintah County uses sands from Asphalt Ridge to pave roads. But the deposits have little other use so far. One reason may be that converting oil sands to crude oil takes a lot of water, usually unavailable in rural Utah.

"Definitely we'll never have the oil-sands industry Alberta has," Isaacson said. "We don't have the oil-sands deposits."

But oil-sands projects have been proposed in the past, and someday one may be developed.

Oil shale

Utah has a better chance of basing a "huge industry" on oil shale than tar sands, Isaacson said.

The "oil" actually is a waxy kerogen that impregnates rocks. If the rocks are crushed and heated, a liquid is given off that can be processed into oil.

The World Energy Council, an alliance of 90 countries, reported that Brazil, Estonia and Australia were producing shale oil in 1999. Several other countries have used the material in the past. In 1916 Estonia began retorting oil shale, and until recently shale oil has been an important part of the country's economy.

The council said more than 74 percent of the world's reserves are in the United States. "The largest of the deposits is found in the ... Green River formation in northwestern Colorado, northeastern Utah and southwestern Wyoming.

"The richest and most easily recoverable deposits are located in the Piceance Creek Basin in western Colorado and the Uinta Basin in eastern Utah," the council adds on its Internet site.