VERNAL, Utah — Utah is a yawn amid the drilling frenzy that has upended the energy picture 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 here, in a remote stretch of craggy desert known as Asphalt Ridge.

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.

The two oversee Petroteq Energy, a Canadian company that aims to have the first commercially viable oil sands production in the United States underway here by early September.