A Cleaner, Cheaper Way to Exploit Utah's Oil Sands

Next year a small Toronto-based energy company plans to begin selling oil made from what it’s calling “America’s first environmentally friendly oil sands project.” MCW Energy Group has built a processing plant in northeastern Utah, where about 32 million barrels of heavy crude are trapped in layers of sand and silt. MCW says it can extract that oil without creating the toxic wastelands that have resulted from oil sands projects in Western Canada. The key is a paint thinner-like solvent that MCW uses to separate the oil from crushed rock and sand. The extraction process uses no water. Rather than leaving behind massive tailing ponds filled with millions of gallons of toxic sludge, the sand will be delivered back to the site after it’s cleaned of about 99 percent of the oil.

It’s not just cleaner, MCW says, it’s also cheaper. Processing a barrel of oil will cost MCW about $38, compared with roughly $75 for oil from Alberta. Its plant can handle only about 250 barrels a day, but its small scale could be a model for oil sands projects around the world, especially as lower oil prices keep companies from making huge investments in traditional oil sands operations. On MCW’s heels is Calgary-based US Oil Sands, which will open a similar plant in Utah next year to produce about 2,000 barrels per day using its “citrus-based” solvent.