The production of oil from Intermountain West tar sands deposits

Six tar sand deposits in the Intermountain West, each containing more than one billion barrels of oil in place, are identified. All of these deposits are in eastern Utah and contain a total of twenty-eight billion barrels of oil. The names of the six deposits arranged in descending order of desirability for large scale surface mining oil recovery operations are as follows: Sunny side, Tar Sand Triangle, Asphalt Ridge, P.R.. Spring, Circle Cliffs, and Hill Creek. An overview of each deposit is presented including geology, surface mining variables, chemical processing variables, environmental aspects, and economics. A comparison of Utah tar sands and Athabasca, Alberta, Canada tar sands is also presented.