| Description |
The Sunnyside No. 1 Tract is in the west part of the Sunnyside Special Tar Sand Area (STSA) in Carbon County, Utah. The tract is located about 22 miles northeast of Price (See Maps 1 and 2 in Appendix I). The legal description and ownership are shown in Table 1. The nominated tract contains 3,202.38 acres, with only 2,635 acres estimated to be underlain by tar sand. Overburden ranges from 0 to 500 feet. The in-place resource has been estimated based on core hole data outside the tract' s boundaries. Due to a lack of on-site data, the tar sand measurement should be considered to be an in-place resource rather than a reserve base. The tar sand resource has been estimated to be 477 million barrels of in-place bitumen. The tar sand outcrops in the southwestern part of the tract and the tract would be amendable to strip mining but probably would not be extracted by in situ methods. The tract is bordered by leases owned by Great National, Mono Power, ENERCO, and AMOCO in addition to privately-owned tar sand. Any of these companies could bid on the tract, but for the purpose of this analysis, it is assumed that an outside party would be the successful bidder and that a separate mining operation would be established. Site specific assumptions for such an operation would be as follows: a. Exploration and developmental drilling would be spaced at roughly one hole per 10 acres with each drill hole requiring approximately .1 to .5 acres. However, the majority of drill holes and roads would be obliterated by subsequent mining, with the remaining holes and roads being reclaimed. b. Three years would be required after exploration to complete mine plans and to receive mine plan approval. After the mine plan is approved, construction of surface facilities would begin. The surface facilities would require between 100 and 200 acres and could be located on-tract or off-tract. The surface facilities would include tar sand extraction plant, warehouse, maintenance shed, parking area, settling ponds, and storage tanks. Ancillary facilities would be required to provide power access and water to the operation. The majority of these facilities would be off-tract. c. The construction workforce would consist of 1,500 people. It would take 2 years to construct the access roads, utility lines, pipeline, and surface facilities. Surface mining would begin after the surface facilities were completed. d. Petroleum would be produced at a rate of 50,000 barrels per day or 18.25 million barrels per year. A crew of 900 persons would be required to operate the mine and plant. Mining would recover 90 percent of the tar sand resource or 429.3 million barrels. The recovery rate of the plant is 95 percent and would recover 407.8 million barrels of the resource. e. The surface mining operation would be a bench mine requiring drilling, blasting, and loading of the overburden and the tar sand. The material would be extracted by shovels and/or draglines. The surface would be disturbed at a rate of 113.2 acres per year and would continue for 22.3 years. Total distur- bance would be 2,635 acres for the mine. The overburden would be transported to a nearby canyon by conveyor belts and dumped. Conveyor belts or trucks would transport the tar sand to the processing facility. Once the pit is opened and the tar sands removed, part of the overburden would be used to backfill the existing pit. The operation would produce 1.81 billion cubic yards of overburden (250 feet average thickness) and 915.8 million cubic yards of waste sand. Approximately 50 percent of the material would be used as backfill in the mine while the other 50 percent would be disposed of in dry canyons. f. The operation would require 12,482 acre-feet of water per year, probably from the Price River or the Green River with attendant pipelines and retention reservoirs. g. Reclamation would begin 5 years after mining began and would be done at a rate of 100 acres per year. It would be completed in 26 years or 31 years after mining begins. The plant facilities would be removed on completion of mining and the area it occupied would be reclaimed. h. Access would be up the right fork of Whitmore Canyon and would require about 4.5 miles of new and/or upgraded road. The stipulation regarding steep slopes would not apply to surface mining. |
