Alberta-based Earth Energy Resources (EER), operating in Utah under the name US Oil Sands, recently received approval to begin exploratory drilling for a 62-acre mine at P.R. Spring, to mine bitumen, a tar-like form of petroleum, from the oil-soaked sands found there. This mine, just east of the Desolation Canyon area of the Green River, represents the first of its kind in the United States. Learn more about Tar Sands Mining.
P.R. Spring in the Uinta Basin
Currently, EER holds leases on roughly 30,000 acres of public lands in the Uinta Basin managed by the School & Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) and is seeking more opportunities to extract petroleum from the tar sands rich Eastern Utah. The approved application to begin mining operations is currently being challenged by Living Rivers and Western Resource Advocates. This December, the BLM will be offering new leases in the Vernal area for the purposes of mining tar sands.
The many threats to the Green River watershed as a direct result of tar sands mining could be severe. There simply is not enough water to support the massive quantities of water required for bitumen extraction and processing. The BLM specifically lists over 30 endangered, threatened or sensitive species in the P.R. Spring area which will surely have their habitat negatively impacted by mining operations. Further threats to the Green River Basin include the use of mining solvents which will likely contaminate groundwater and the Green River itself, the digging of vast open pit mines which will both destroy wilderness areas and increase the dust content of the atmosphere, in turn, reducing water quality, alpine snowpacks and river levels, and the establishment of a massive mining infrastructure including roads, pipelines and power lines in this undeveloped and pristine region of Utah. These threats will serve to greatly increase human induced dysfunction in the Green River ecosystem. Extracted bitumen will be trucked to Salt Lake refineries for processing, inevitably exacerbating the valley’s air pollution problems.