Second US Tar Sands Mine, Owned by Former ExxonMobil and Chevron Exec., Approved in Utah

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MCW Enterprises Ltd., a Canada-based corporation, announced on Nov. 19 that it has received all necessary permits to streamline tar sands extraction at its Asphalt Ridge plant located in Vernal, Utah starting inย December.

The announcement comes just weeks after U.S. Oil Sands Company received the first ever green light to extract tar sands south in the Unitedย States.

Recently changing its name from MCW Energy,ย MCW Enterprises Ltd.ย ownsย MCW Oil Sands Recovery LLC as a wholly owned subsidiary. The company’s CEO, R. Gerald Bailey – often also referred to as Raymond Bailey or Jerry Bailey – is the former President of Exxon Arabian Gulf and also served as an Executive for Texaco (since purchased by Chevron) for 15ย years.

MCW‘s website explains that its stake in the Asphalt Ridge is a โ€œproven/probable resource of over 50+ million barrels of oilโ€ and that it โ€œis seeking other oil sands leases in Utah, which contains over 32 billion barrels of oil within 8 majorย deposits.โ€ย 

Bailey toldย Flahrety Financial News that he sees this first project as a crucible, or testing grounds, with the potential for more extraction to come down theย road.ย 

โ€œThis is really going to be a technology play,โ€ he stated. โ€œI don’t plan to build another Exxon out there in theย desert.โ€

The Frac Sandย Connection

In June 2012, Temple Mountain Energyย (TME) – also based in Vernal, UT – cut a five-year oil sands supply agreement deal with MCW.ย 

โ€œUnder this five year Supply Agreement, Temple Mountain will supply MCW with 8,333 tons of oil sands material per month until the year 2016,โ€ MCW‘s website explains.

Once the bitumen is extracted, TME plans on selling the fine-grained sand under which it sits to unconventional oil and gas companies for hydraulic fracturing (โ€œfrackingโ€).

โ€œThe recent rapid expansion of shale gas and shale oil drillingโ€ฆhas greatly increased the need for fracking sand in this region,โ€ TME wrote on it website. โ€œAsphalt Ridge is well-positioned to serve this high-volume marketโ€”both in terms of geographic location and in terms of sandย quality.โ€ย 

To date, frac sand mining companies have targeted five states – Wisconsin, Minnesota, Texas, Arkansas, and Iowa – transforming tens of thousands of acres of land into โ€œSand Land.โ€ Utah is soon to become numberย six.

Race for What’s Left: End of โ€œEasy Oil,โ€ Heavy Price toย Pay

With domestic unconventional oil and gas wells under-producing, setting the stage for the shale gas bubble to burst, the push to extract tar sands in the United States is a depiction of the oil and gas industry’s reckless push to extract every last drop in a โ€œrace for what’s left.โ€

The age of โ€œeasy oil,โ€ to borrow the term from scholar Michael Klare, is over.ย In a May 2012 interview with FutureMoneyTrends.com, Bailey acknowledged this as well, stating that the โ€œcheap, easy oil is pretty much behindย us.โ€

Bailey defines โ€œcheapโ€ here with regards to the price of extracting the โ€œtough oilโ€ from a productionย point-of-view.

But as the Alberta tar sands north of the border have shown, it’s the ecosystem and climate that really pays the heaviest price ofย all.

Update:ย Kate Finneran, Co-Director of Before It Starts toldย DeSmogBlog,ย โ€œWhile this is still a pilot project, Before It Starts (a project of Living Rivers) will be keeping an eye on it. If they attempt to turn this into a full-scale mining operation, they will face a storm of opposition on the ground here inย Utah.โ€

Photo Credit:ย Bruce Raynorย |ย ShutterStock

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Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.

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