The Price Oil Rises While Utah Sits Atop Billions of Barrels Worth in the Ground

With gas prices continuing to rise, untapped oil resources are getting a new look. Utah is home to some massive oil deposits that, up to this point, have been considered unreachable.

Understanding Oil Shale: What Lies Beneath

Oil shale deposits are sedimentary rocks that contain oil in them. The technology to release the oil has been slow to develop, especially when there have been easier places to pump it out of the ground.

However, as gas prices climb and the technology improves, the oil in the rock gets another look. Utah has some of the biggest deposits of this oil shale and most of it sits on government land.

The Green River Formation: A Hidden Treasure

The Green River Formation that spans Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado contains 1.5 trillion barrels of oil. The deposit in the Uinta Basin by Vernal alone contains nearly 500 billion barrels of oil.

The complicated part is that many of these deposits are near National Parks and National Monuments. This protected land has been a big reason why the oil here has been mostly left alone so far.

It also requires water to extract the oil from the Shale. Water in the state is already at a premium and directing its use towards oil fields would require real sacrifices. For these reasons, oil has been left in the ground and most people are unaware of the potential oil sitting in Utah.

Read More: Precious Metals Found Near Utah Lake Is Big News

As the rest of the world seeks to recover the shale oil in places like China and Canada, the time may come when it will make more sense to look at the deposits in Utah. Of course, if the price of oil gets much higher, it might happen sooner.