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Correction: A headline over a front page story Monday misstated scientists' attitudes toward developing Utah's tar-sands reserves. Given the right market conditions, and development of new technologies, the reserves could be exploited commercially, the experts said.

Excitement over the development of Utah's tar-sands reserves has relied on the example of massive mining and refining projects in Alberta, Canada, but Utah's potential doesn't compare and may never be realized.

That general conclusion, reached at an academic conference at the University of Utah this past week, came from scientists, state officials, industry representatives and environmentalists.

Though not unanimous, the findings mean hopeful tar-sands developers are going to have to come up with new technologies to succeed commercially.

"That's why all of us are working on new processes," said Page van Löben Sels, president of the consulting firm Performance Investors Inc. and former president of the Utah affiliate of Earth Energy Resources of Calgary, Alberta.

Known as oil sands in Canada, tar sands contain bitumen - residual fossil oil trapped in rock - which can be processed to make asphalt and crude oil, then refined to produce gasoline and diesel. There are an estimated 3 trillion barrels of oil in tar sands in the world. About 650 billion barrels are in North America, most in the Athabasca field in Alberta.

Southeast Utah is thought to have 12 billion to 40 billion barrels of potential petroleum locked in sandstone formations, mostly around Vernal in Uintah County. Utah's tar sands comprise 274,000 acres. About 74 percent of those acres are public land, with federal lands making up about 71.6 percent, said Jim Kohler, solid minerals chief for the state Bureau of Land Management.

It is unknown how much of that potential would be recoverable. D. Glen Snarr, president and chief financial officer of Earth Energy Resources, thinks only about 8 billion barrels is realistic.

"The size of the resource in Utah is not anywhere near the size of the resource in Athabasca," Snarr said.

That doesn't mean it shouldn't be researched and developed, conference participants said. But the physical properties of Utah's bitumen pose enormous challenges.

Vince Memmott, general manager for refining, processing and engineering for Flying J, is interested in tar-sands development. "It's our hope the market value is greater than the cost," he said.

But costs are considerable and the ability to bring the bitumen to market isn't in place.

Milind Deo, a U. chemical engineering professor, said oil prices would have to consistently top $60 a barrel if developing the state's tar sands is to be economically feasible. As he spoke Thursday, crude oil was trading for $61.17 a barrel.

Most of the current technology allows bitumen to be strip-mined or heated out of the rock. Both processes require huge amounts of heated water and release significant quantities of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

Raw bitumen needs to be upgraded by thermal "cracking" using petroleum coke, which burns off 10 percent to 13 percent of the bitumen energy. There are only two coking refiners in the West, one in Casper, Wyo., the other in Salt Lake City. Before the bitumen can be upgraded, it must be diluted with a hydrocarbon fluid, then trucked to the plants, Memmott said.

Separating the bitumen from rock creates synthetic crude oil that can be blended with crude oil and fed to refineries. But Utah refineries are already at capacity, and building a new one would be a multibillion-dollar investment, Memmott said.

Social and environmental costs also figure in. Snarr said housing costs in Alberta have led one producer to build 5,000-bed camps for workers, who take the company jet to work from all over Canada.

The strip-mining operations require heavy equipment that destroys roads and bridges. Health workers and doctors are in short supply. Alcoholism and substance abuse ravage the work force, whose average age is 31. Though Athabascan field workers make $90,000 per year, there is still a chronic worker shortage, Snarr said.

Uintah County already is seeing similar troubles, though on a smaller scale.

Earth Energy Resources has developed a solvent process to strip bitumen from the sands, which Snarr said would avoid water-quality issues that plague Alberta. The sands that go back into the mine hole are clean, he said.

But van Löben Sels, one of the oil shale and tar-sands advisers to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., said wastewater ponds won't be allowed in Utah and water quality laws restrict what can be put back on the ground to leach away. "What doesn't work," he said, "is a solvent" because if all the impermeable bitumen is removed, leached benzene is a main concern.

For Utah environmentalists, "the overriding issue is, 'Where are the tar sands?' Several [deposits] are in the most environmentally sensitive areas in the state," said Steve Bloch, staff attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and a member of the governor's shale and sands advisory panel.

Tar-sands maps overlay maps of several wilderness study areas and the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Onsite mining and upgrading "would leave scars that last for centuries," Bloch said.

How do the deposits compare?

Utah's tar sands are different from Alberta's oil sands. The fossil oil bitumen in the Alberta fields is wetter and more crumbly than the thick bitumen in Utah's hard sandstone.

Alberta bitumen is extracted easily with water, while Utah's sands would have to be crushed first. If the same steam extraction process were used as in Canada, water requirements would be huge.

Extracting Utah's bitumen could take as much energy as it eventually could yield. Getting it out of the ground would result in huge tailings deposits and pose water-use and disposal problems that could run afoul of environmental laws.

Getting it processed and to market would be difficult. Most Utah tar sands are far from roads and power lines - or are within wilderness study areas and the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, virtually guaranteeing legal fights.