Utah's Oil Sands

Oil sands, or tar sands as they are often referred to, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. The sands known as "oil-wet" deposits in Utah contain a mixture of sand and a dense, extremely viscous form of petroleum technically referred to as bitumen or tar. There are many other deposits of oil sands throughout the world, most notably in Venezuela and Canada, where they are known as "water-wet" deposits because they're typically found deep in the earth, mixed in with water, sand and clay in a semi-solid natural deposit. Although several of America's western/southern states have oil sands deposits, Utah contains approximately 55% of the nation's total deposits, concentrated in eight major deposit areas with a total resource of over 32 billion barrels of oil.