Utah is a yawn amid the drilling frenzy that has upended the energy industry in recent years. It accounts for just one of every 100 barrels of oil produced nationwide.
But a couple of executives who have spent decades hunting for oil across the Middle East, South America and Canada are betting that the next energy patch will be near a remote stretch of craggy desert known as Asphalt Ridge, The New York Times reports.
They are trying something that has repeatedly failed in Utah: mining the state’s enormous deposits of oil sands, an arduous process of extracting oil from hard rock.
David Sealock and Jerry Bailey of Canada-based Petroteq Energy say their firm has the potential to start the first commercially viable oil sands production in the United States by early September.
Petroteq’s claims challenge the notion that oil sands mining is in eclipse. The heavy oil produced from oil sands is among the most carbon-intensive fuels, a drawback as concerns about climate change grow.
Petroteq says its approach will be far cleaner than oil sands mining in Canada, which is more water intensive and leaves vast toxic tailing ponds.
Under its system, Petroteq mines and crushes the oil-saturated sands into small chunks, then moves them along a 150-foot conveyor belt into a tank where they are mixed with solvents. The mix is then transferred to a second tank, where a centrifuge spins the lumpy liquid, separating the oil from the sands. Clean sand is moved to a reclamation landfill. Finally, the solvents are distilled out of the oily liquid and recycled over and over again.
