Is tar sand development part of our future?

What a difference a decade makes. It has been almost 10 years since the last of several attempts to produce oil from the tar sands at Asphalt Ridge near Vernal, Utah. The only activity since that time has been mining the tar sand for road repair and paving material. The problem is not availability, but the cost of methods to extract the hydrocarbon. The outlook may have improved recently, however, with the development of a new project at Asphalt Ridge. Buena Ventura Resources, a subsidiary of Crown Energy Corporation, completed testing of a 100 ton-per-hour demonstration plant for hydrocarbon extraction in June 1994. This superseded a smaller pilot plant which operated successfully in 1992.