U.S. Tar Sands Action: Reports from the Front Lines in Utah

For the past five months, activists from the Utah Tar Sands Resis­tance have camped out on the sage-swept, high plateau lands known as PR Springs in east­ern Utah. From the site—where the first tar sands mine in the Unit­ed States is planned, and pre­lim­i­nary clear­ing work is already underway—you can’t miss the majes­tic Book Cliffs that tum­ble from the East Tava­puts Plateau and the canyons full of tall conifers.

Book Cliffs is an area cher­ished by sports­men and sportswomen—the pub­lic lands a place where Rocky Moun­tain Elk roam free, a place beloved by hunters and anglers and campers and back­pack­ers.

Book Cliffs is also an area present­ly threat­ened by oil, gas, and tar sands devel­op­ment. Activists with Peace­ful Upris­ing and the Utah Tar Sands Resis­tance are work­ing to stop the tar sands projects in their tracks.

Since May, a group of pro­test­ers have sat in a per­ma­nent vig­il of peace­ful resis­tance at the site of the US Oil Sands project at PR Springs. The camp has at times swelled to as many as 80 activists.

The ongo­ing vig­il has been punc­tu­at­ed with a hand­ful of non-vio­lent, direct action protests. Over the past few months, a total of 27 activists have been arrest­ed for acts of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence dur­ing three such actions. The activists have effec­tive­ly shut down work at the site on mul­ti­ple occa­sions.

On June 17th, US Oil Sands’ work was tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed, when mem­bers of a group called Women of Action Against Vio­lent Extrac­tion joined the Peace­ful Upris­ing and Utah Tar Sands Resis­tance activists at the PR Springs vig­il, and swarmed a bull­doz­er, halt­ing work.

A let­ter from the EPA to US Oil Sands made pub­lic in July revealed that the pro­posed tar sands devel­op­ment at PR Springs was actu­al­ly on offi­cial Amer­i­can Indi­an land, strad­dling the bor­der between the Uin­tah and Ouray Reser­va­tions of the Ute Tribe.

In all, 21 were arrest­ed dur­ing the protests, and the legal ram­i­fi­ca­tions of theEPA let­ter are still pend­ing.

Jes­si­ca Lee, who vol­un­teers with the Utah Tar Sands Resis­tance, told DeSmog­Blog that her group is con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tor­ing con­struc­tion work at the PR Springs site, which some believe is now ille­gal based on the EPA‘s let­ter.

Two oth­er groups, Liv­ing Rivers and the West­ern Resource Advo­cates, are also work­ing through the courts to put a stop to the min­ing, an effor that was giv­en a boost by the EPA let­ter.

On Sep­tem­ber 23rd, five more non-vio­lent protesters—dressed as chip­munks, which are threat­ened by the development—were arrest­ed dur­ing an action atPR Springs.

Accord­ing to Lee, the vig­il will con­tin­ue as long as work con­tin­ues at the site, and future actions will be encour­aged and planned accord­ing to the sit­u­a­tion on the ground.

“Part of the rea­son we are here is to mon­i­tor what’s going on, to see the work under­way and what the con­struc­tion crew is doing.”

Lee says that because of win­ter con­di­tions, they expect that work will like­ly halt with­in a month.

“The cam­paign will con­tin­ue through the win­ter in some form,” said Lee, explain­ing that the group will be based in Salt Lake City and will con­tin­ue to raise aware­ness and sup­port the legal bat­tles. “If work resumes in spring, we will be back,” said Lee.

Besides US Oil Sands, two oth­er com­pa­nies are work­ing to devel­op their own tar sands projects in the area. MCW bought an exist­ing asphalt mine at the Asphalt Ridge in Ver­nal, Utah, and is retro­fitting it to extract tar sands. The com­pa­ny has recent­ly embarked on the sec­ond phase of devel­op­ment, and is build­ing a tar sands pro­cess­ing plant.

Near­by, Amer­i­can Sands is devel­op­ing a tar sands mine in the Sun­ny­side area, rough­ly 60 miles west and across the Green Riv­er from PR Springs in Car­bon Coun­ty.

While work stops for win­ter at the min­ing sites, cam­paign­ers will focus some of their atten­tion on five oil refiner­ies in the Salt Lake City Val­ley. Chevron, which oper­ates one of Salt Lake City’s refiner­ies, has gone on record say­ing that they won’t refine Amer­i­can tar sands at that refin­ery.

Accord­ing to Lee, if the refiner­ies aren’t will­ing or equipped to process tar sands crude, it will present anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant hur­dle for the extrac­tors.

Infra­struc­ture to ship tar sands crude to the West Coast or Gulf Coast—where the bulk of refiner­ies that han­dle tar sands crude are located—is lim­it­ed. With­out a near­by des­ti­na­tion for the tar sands crude, the local activists hope, an invest­ment in East­ern Utah tar sands becomes finan­cial­ly unde­sire­able.

If any of the local refener­ies do sign a con­tract to accept tar sands from Utah, or if the govert­ment approves a new rail line or pipeline from the Uin­tah to Salt Lake City area, Lee says that the Utah Tar Sands Resis­tance will be there ready to engage in direct action.

With each action—halting clear­ing and min­ing oper­a­tions, tak­ing legal actions, reduc­ing sales oppor­tu­ni­ties at refineries—the Utah activists are slow­ing down extrac­tion and mak­ing it more expen­sive for com­pa­nies to dig tar sands out of East­ern Utah. This is the peo­ple-pow­ered car­bon tax at work.