A market assessment of oil shale and oil sands development scenarios in Utah's Uinta Basin

The enormous size of U.S. oil shale and oil sands resources, and Utah resources in particular, is well-known. Recent analyses by the United States Geological Survey of oil shale resources in western Colorado and eastern Utah have estimated the total in-place oil in the Piceance Basin of Colorado at 1.53 trillion barrels [1] and in the Uinta Basin of Utah at 1.32 trillion barrels [2]. A 2008 Utah Geological Survey study estimates the economically-recoverable resource in the Uinta Basin to be 77 billion barrels [3]. The total U.S. oil sands resource is estimated at 76 billion barrels of in-place oil. The largest U.S. oil sands deposits are found in the State of Utah, which has an estimated resource size of 32 billion barrels of in-place oil [4]. A 2013 study of a large Utah deposit known as Tar Sand Triangle estimates a commercially viable resource size of 1.30-2.46 billion barrels in that deposit [5]. Despite the size of the resource and the fact that U.S. production of liquid transportation fuels from oil sands and oil shale has been shown to be technically feasible [1-3], there is currently no commercial scale production of either resource. Given today's economic and political climate, this report seeks to assess significant impediments to and impacts of development of U.S. oil shale and oil sands resources. It focuses on three specific questions: (1) what positive and negative externalities and non-market costs are associated with development of these resources and how does the perception of these costs impact development; (2) what is the per barrel cost of oil produced from four oil shale and oil sands development scenarios; and (3) what are the broad regional impacts that may result as side effects if the scenarios are realized.