United States tar sands

The term 'Tar Sands' is a catch-all misnomer that includes asphaltic and oil-impregnated sandstones, siltstones, and other elastics and even limestones and other carbonates - but not "oil shales" or man-made paving material. A press agent might entitle this paper "OIL, the Overlooked Billions of Barrels" or something more eyearresting and glamorous. He would have reason for enthusiasm and bewilderment that people have paid so little attention to this tremendous energy reserve. He might even muse that the Athabasca tar sands in neighboring Canada have drawn attention as being the world's greatest liquid fuel reserve and that the oil shales of the West have come to the fore sporadically as being America's most important future liquid fuel source. Now for a very few statistics to start dutiful listeners toward slumber. According to 396 references, only a dozen of which give reserve figures, the United States contains 2 1/2 to 51/2 billion barrels of oil recoverable from surface and near-surface impregnated rocks. This figure compares favorably with that for the Athabasca sands of 3 to 5 billion barrels, this being the 1 percent of the whole reserve estimated commercial by present mining and separation methods.