Tar Sands coming to Utah

[auroraglacialis]

I saw this some time ago, now it seems to get very concrete (Beginning of 2012 - that is getting closer now. And the XXL pipeline will probably also be a factor, I assume)

In Utah, the first American tar sands mine is set to begin operations by early 2012 unless environmental groups can mount a successful challenge.

Utah is home to some of the largest swaths of tar sands deposits in the U.S. According to the Bureau of Land Management, an estimated 12-19 billion barrels of oil lay buried beneath largely wild, scenic lands in the form of bitumen—a heavy, viscous form of petroleum that can be extracted from the mixture of sand, clay and tar sands and then refined into higher-grade fuel. Though these deposits have been discovered and explored for the better part of the 20th century, the consolidated nature of Utah’s tar sands have made getting at the oil too difficult to be profitable. Until now.

Earth Energy Resources, a Canadian oil mining company, says that it has the technology to safely and efficiently extract oil from Utah’s tar sands, and that new extraction technology, combined with high oil prices and a political atmosphere keen on energy self-sufficiency, has made mining Utah’s tar sands deposits for oil economically viable.

Digging a Deeper Hole |EMagazine.com