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 will one day resemble Kennecott's Bingham copper mine operations, which is easily seen on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley.

Nine Mile Canyon is home to exposed panels of ancient Indian rock art. Energy development watchdogs say the rock art is already at risk of being destroyed by heavy truck traffic, which is associated with current and future proposed oil and gas development in addition to the tar sands and oil shale proposals.

In the past the 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 have been found in parts of Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. The Interior Department states the Green River Formation, which is located in parts of three states. is estimated to contain over two trillion barrels of oil, more than the world's current known oil reserves.

Federal officials say there's another estimated 11.8 million known barrels of oil in the Uinta Basin area of Utah 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, environmental impacts, what to do with the waste.

Existing BLM resource management 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 PEIS, 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 a lot of uncertainty," Kohler said. That includes 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."

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com