#uinta basin

First, environmental groups and the Tohono O’odham Nation, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and the Hopi Tribe have sued to stop a copper mine in Arizona from starting up until the issues in an underlying lawsuit have been resolved. Excerpt from a story in the Washington Post about the litigation:

Scenic State Highway 83 gently curves through southeastern Arizona’s wine country, past waves of blond grass dotted with orange-tipped ocotillo plants before the dark Santa Rita Mountains loom into view.

The Milepost 44 pullout offers a panorama of the range in the Coronado National Forest where a Canadian firm wants to carve out a massive copper mine near Tucson. The $1.9 billion Rosemont Mine, at a half-mile deep and a mile wide, would sprawl across federal, state and private land, leaving a waste pile the height of skyscraper.

Native American tribes and environmental groups have sued to stop Hudbay Minerals Inc. of Toronto, arguing its mine could desecrate sacred, ancestral lands and dry up wells and waterways while ravaging habitat for endangered jaguar and other species. Last week, they asked a federal judge to prevent the project from proceeding until the lawsuits are decided.

Here’s an interesting tidbit about the Rosemont Mine, which supports allegation of trump administration corruption and the ethical problems of our new secretary of the interior, david bernhardt. This is from the media source, Arizona Central:

The lobbying firm that has represented Rosemont and Hudbay is Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. Records show one of the lobbyists who worked for Rosemont from 2011 through 2015 was David Bernhardt, who joined the Trump administration and was confirmed by the Senate in April as Interior secretary.

In a 2017 letter, Bernhardt recused himself from participating in matters involving his former employer or clients for a one-year period. He listed Hudbay and Rosemont Copper among his former clients. Bernhardt is now facing an ethics investigation after Democratic lawmakers voiced concerns about potential conflicts of interest during his time as deputy secretary in 2017 and 2018.

Then, environmental groups have sued to enjoin the development of an oil shale mine in Utah. Excerpt from a story about this in The Salt Lake Tribune:

A proposed oil shale mine and ore-processing project in the Uinta Basin is under legal fire from several environmental groups that are seeking to invalidate a recent Bureau of Land Management decision to let the developer cut a 14-mile utility corridor across public land.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in Salt Lake City’s U.S. District Court, the groups say the BLM’s environmental review should have considered the impacts to air, water, wildlife and climate from the massive strip mine proposed on private land by Enefit American Oil.

The BLM had declined to conduct the wider analysis, opting instead to look only at the direct impacts associated with the construction of pipelines, roads and transmission lines to the project, which is angling to be the first oil shale mine in North America to produce commercial quantities of crude oil.

A subsidiary of a large state-run Estonian energy firm, Enefit hopes to develop a mine on 9,000 acres near the White River, along with a 320-acre processing plant that would “retort” ore known as kerogen. This rockbound hydrocarbon can be converted to crude if subjected to intense heat and pressure. As a result, this form of energy extraction uses large amounts of energy and water.

Musket Shot Springs Scenic Overlook, UT (No. 4)

The Uinta Basin forms a geologic structural basin, and is the source of commercial oil and gas production. Separated from the Piceance Basin by the Douglas Creek Arch, both basins formed during the Laramide Orogeny, and are bounded by the Charleston-Nebo thrust fault, the Uinta Basin boundary fault, and the Grand Hogback monocline. The Uinta Basin includes the Wasatch Plateau. According to the USGS Uinta-Piceance Assessment Team, "The black-shale facies of the Green River Formation is the main petroleum system of Tertiary age whereas the Mahogany zone of the Green River Formation is a minor component. The Cretaceous Mancos Group and equivalent rocks are the main source of Cretaceous oil and a major contributor of gas in the basin, whereas the Upper Cretaceous Mesaverde is a lesser contributor of oil but a significant source for gas. Ferron Sandstone coals are known to be a source of coalbed methane. The most prominent source of oil from Paleozoic rocks is the Permian Phosphoria Formation.

During the Laramide Orogeny along the Wasatch Mountains, the north-south trending coast during the Late Cretaceous was receding eastward, at the same time the area where the basin is located was subsiding, creating a lacustrine environment. A clastic wedge consisting of the North Horn, Colton, and Wasatch was deposited northwards. These sediments interfingered with organic-rich lacustrine clays and carbonate muds of the Green River and Flagstaff facies. Later, deposits originated from the Uinta Mountains from the north, forming a southward-thinning clastic wedge. A carbonate sediment consisting of an organic-rich oil shale was deposited from the middle Eocene into the Oligocene. The basin is also known for solid-hydrocarbon-filled fractures consisting of ozocerite, gilsonite, and wurtzilite.

In 1948, oil was discovered in the Paleozoic portion of the basin at Ashley Valley. Tertiary discoveries followed in 1948 at Roosevelt, and then the Red Wash Field and Duchesne Field in 1951. The Bluebell Field was discovered in 1967 and the Altamont Field in 1970. The Altamont-Bluebell structural trap occurs where the Wasatch sandstone pinches out.

A Vernal man is facing three misdemeanor charges after police say they determined that he lied about being sexually assault.

A proposed 60,000-barrel-a-day oil pipeline would eliminate 250 truck trips between Salt Lake City and the Uinta Basin, but Utah water purveyors caution that the 135-mile project could pose “catastrophic” risks to drinking-water supplies. “It’s not a matter of if but when a pipeline ruptures and we’ll be out of drinking water for a time,” warned Scott Paxman, assistant general manager of the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District. All three ...