Fossil Foolishness:
Utah's Pursuit of Oil Shale and Tar Sands
Illustrated Maps from the Report
Click images below to see larger maps.
How Oil Shale and Tar Sands Use Water
Map of Utah's Oil Shale and Tar Sands Deposits
The map above depicts the locations of Utah's deposits of oil shale and tar sands, as well as the boundaries of important public lands such as National Parks, National Monuments, and Wilderness Study Areas. While oil shale is concentrated in the northeast corner of the state, tar sands are spread out in much smaller pockets over a larger portion of the state, acting as a disincentive to commercial exlpoitation.
Neither oil shale or tar sands are consistent in their quality, depth, or thickness from place to place. The prospective commercial viability of these resources is complicated by varying energy yield per ton, intermixing with groundwater, thickness of the deposit, depth beneath the surface, and location on federal, state, private, or tribal lands.
More maps of oil and shale and tar sands in the West are located on the federal Oil Shale and Tar Sands Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement page