We with the Utah Tar Sands Resistance aren’t all about tar sands, you know. Eastern Utah has become a sacrifice zone for the Western United States in terms of destructive, toxic fuel extraction, and we’re standing up to say “No!” to extreme energies in the Uintah Basin–and that includes oil shale.

Enefit, an Estonian government-owned company with some half-baked ideas about mining for oil shale in Eastern Utah (in order to produce Kerogen), is bringing the usual lines about ” minimizing land disturbance,” ” reclamation” of the land, and their “commitment to environmental stewardship.”

Bullshit.

By their very nature, extractive processes such as Enefit’s are highly destructive, leaving behind a wasteland, and polluting the water and air. Even if we believed Enefit’s lies, the state of Utah requires little to no oversight of oil & gas projects, and has recently allowed US Oil Sands to start tar sands mining without requiring a pollution permit or water monitoring. Why should the Enefit project be any different in a state with a “Mine, Baby, Mine!” mentality?

Oil shale mining in Estonia has left the Baltic country with a population high in respiratory disease, and according to a recent report from KSL News, “There are still vast piles of waste in Estonia, and dozens of square miles remain torn up by strip-mining. There used to be severe air pollution and water quality problems.”

Recently, Shell announced that they were abandoning their own oil shale project in the Western Slopes of Colorado, after wasting over $30 million of dollars in “exploration.” They following Chevron in fleeing the Colorado Plateau because oil shale development is EXPENSIVE, RISKY and UNRELIABLE.

Based on early tests, folks in Estonia are even say that Enefit’s Utah project is “not promising” and are worried that it could cost them $100 million.

We don’t want Utah to become a wasteland. Our air, water, and land are too precious to squander on speculative and experimental mining practices.

Join us as we say “NO!” to oil shale, and get ready to STOP ENEFIT!

(Please email us at utahtarsandsresistance@gmail.com for directions, and join the Facebook event for updates)