1st US tar sands mine set to open for business in Utah
Source: Associated Press
1st US tar sands mine set to open for business in Utah
Brady Mccombs, Associated Press
Updated 2:21 pm, Friday, August 21, 2015
BOOK CLIFFS, Utah (AP) — On a remote Utah ridge covered in sagebrush, pines and wild grasses, a Canadian company is about to embark on something never before done commercially in the United States: digging sticky, black, tar-soaked sand from the ground and extracting the petroleum.
The impending opening of the nation's first tar sands mine has become another front in the battle across the West between preservationists and the energy industry.
U.S. Oil Sands has invested nearly $100 million over the last decade to acquire rights to about 50 square miles, obtain permits and develop what it says is a brand-new, non-toxic method of separating out the oil with the use of an orange-peel extract similar to what's in citrus-scented household soaps and detergents.
. . .
Across the rolling green hills of the Book Cliffs of eastern Utah, about 165 miles from Salt Lake City, the company plans this fall to begin digging the first in a series of pits, each the size of a football stadium, and start unsticking oil from the sand that crumbles in your hand like a brownie.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/1st-US-tar-sands-mine-set-to-open-for-business-in-6457862.php
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for the following description:
"Well this is freakin' depressing. The dirtiest of the dirtiest is coming to our backyard. We're scraping the last bits of resin out of the crack pipe, and pretending that we know what comes next."
