Bitumen is an immensely viscous constituent of petroleum. Depending on its exact composition it can be a sticky, black liquid or an apparently solid mass that behaves as a liquid over very large time scales. In American English, the material is commonly referred to as asphalt. Whether found in natural deposits or refined from petroleum, the substance is classed as a pitch. Prior to the 20th century, the term asphaltum was in general use. The word derives from the Ancient Greek word ἄσφαλτος (ásphaltos), which referred to natural bitumen or pitch. The largest natural deposit of bitumen in the world is the Pitch Lake of southwest Trinidad, which is estimated to contain 10 million tons.
Uintah County is a county in the U.S. state of Utah. As of the 2020 United States Census the population was 35,620. Its county seat and largest city is Vernal. The county was named for the portion of the Ute Indian tribe that lived in the basin.
Roosevelt is a city in Duchesne County, Utah, United States. The population was 6,747 at the 2020 census, an increase of 701 (11.6%) from the 6,046 counted in the 2010 census.
Tar pits, sometimes referred to as asphalt pits, are large asphalt deposits. They form in the presence of petroleum, which is created when decayed organic matter is subjected to pressure underground. If this crude oil seeps upward via fractures, conduits, or porous sedimentary rock layers, it may pool up at the surface. The lighter components of the crude oil evaporate into the atmosphere, leaving behind a black, sticky asphalt. Tar pits are often excavated because they contain large fossil collections.
Oil sands, tar sands, crude bitumen, or bituminous sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. Oil sands are either loose sands or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and water, soaked with bitumen, a dense and extremely viscous form of petroleum.
The Green River, located in the western United States, is the chief tributary of the Colorado River. The watershed of the river, known as the Green River Basin, covers parts of the U.S. states of Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. The Green River is 730 miles (1,170 km) long, beginning in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming and flowing through Wyoming and Utah for most of its course, except for a short segment of 40 miles (64 km) in western Colorado. Much of the route traverses the arid Colorado Plateau, where the river has carved some of the most spectacular canyons in the United States. The Green is slightly smaller than Colorado when the two rivers merge but typically carries a larger load of silt. The average yearly mean flow of the river at Green River, Utah is 6,121 cubic feet (173.3 m3) per second.
Japan black is a lacquer or varnish suitable for many substrates but known especially for its use on iron and steel. It can also be called japan lacquer and Brunswick black. Its name comes from the association between the finish and Japanese products in the West. Used as a verb, japan means "to finish in japan black". Thus japanning and japanned are terms describing the process and its products.
Albertite is a variety of asphalt found in the Albert Formation in Albert County, New Brunswick, and in a deposit at Dingwall, in the north-east of Scotland. It is a type of solid hydrocarbon.
Heavy crude oil is highly viscous oil that cannot easily flow from production wells under normal reservoir conditions.
Abelsonite is a nickel porphyrin mineral with chemical formula C31H32N4Ni. It was discovered in 1969 in the U.S. State of Utah and described in 1975. The mineral is named after geochemist Philip H. Abelson. It is the only known crystalline geoporphyrin.
The Uintah Railway was a small 3 ft narrow gauge railroad company in Utah and Colorado in the United States. It was constructed to carry Gilsonite which provided most of its operating revenues; but it operated as a common carrier from 1904 to 1939, also carrying passengers, mail, express, and other cargoes including sheep and wool. When a public library was built in Dragon in 1910, the Uintah Railway agreed to deliver library books free of charge to and from any borrower along its route. Many area ranchers and miners took advantage of the opportunity.
A petroleum seep is a place where natural liquid or gaseous hydrocarbons escape to the Earth's atmosphere and surface, normally under low pressure or flow. Seeps generally occur above either terrestrial or offshore petroleum accumulation structures. The hydrocarbons may escape along geological layers, or across them through fractures and fissures in the rock, or directly from an outcrop of oil-bearing rock.
The Uinta Basin is a physiographic section of the larger Colorado Plateaus province, which in turn is part of the larger Intermontane Plateaus physiographic division. It is also a geologic structural basin in eastern Utah, east of the Wasatch Mountains and south of the Uinta Mountains. The Uinta Basin is fed by creeks and rivers flowing south from the Uinta Mountains. Many of the principal rivers flow into the Duchesne River which feeds the Green River—a tributary of the Colorado River. The Uinta Mountains form the northern border of the Uinta Basin. They contain the highest point in Utah, Kings Peak, with a summit 13,528 feet above sea level. The climate of the Uinta Basin is semi-arid, with occasionally severe winter cold.
The Ute Indian Tribe of the Uinta and Ouray Reservation is a federally recognized tribe of Indians in northeastern Utah, United States. Three bands of Utes comprise the Ute Indian Tribe: the Whiteriver Band, the Uncompahgre Band and the Uintah Band. The Tribe has a membership of more than three thousand individuals, with over half living on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation. The Ute Indian Tribe operates its own tribal government and oversees approximately 1.3 million acres of trust land which contains significant oil and gas deposits.
Impsonite is a black, carbonaceous substance, with a specific gravity of 1.10–1.25 and a carbon content of 50–85%. It is described as an asphaltic pyrobitumen. It is believed to be derived from a fluid bitumen which polymerized after filling a vein. The term was coined by George Homans Eldridge in 1901, referring to the asphaltic material in the Impson Valley in southeastern Oklahoma, later known as the Jumbo mine. The asphaltic material in the Impson Valley was later reclassified as grahamite, based on solubility and chemical similarities with the type grahamite of West Virginia.
The Utah Oil Sands Joint Venture is a joint venture between Nevtah Capital Management, Inc., and Black Sands Energy Corp. to develop oil sands resources at the Uintah Basin in Utah.
Red Leaf Resources, Inc, doing business as Green Leaf Carbon Technologies, is an oil-shale technology company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It is the developer of the shale oil extraction technology HCCO® Process. The company holds mineral leases in Utah for oil shale development that can support 75,000 bbl/day of oil production. Its Uintah Partners LLC subsidiary also holds surface rights in the Uinta Basin with a permit for a 40,000 barrel per day refinery. The company is affiliated with Questerre Energy Corporation.
Fantasy Canyon is a 10-acre (40,000 m2) canyon containing unusual rock formations that were created through erosion and weathering. It is located about 27 miles (43 km) south of Vernal, in Uintah County, Utah, United States. Fantasy Canyon is managed by the Bureau of Land Management and is only accessible via the Fantasy Canyon Trail.
Dragon is a ghost town in Uintah County, at the extreme eastern edge of Utah, United States. Founded in about 1888 as a Gilsonite mining camp, Dragon boomed in the first decade of the 20th century as the end-of-line town for the Uintah Railway. Although it declined when the terminus moved farther north in 1911, Dragon survived as the largest of the Gilsonite towns. It was abandoned after its mining operations stopped in 1938 and the Uintah Railway went out of business in 1939.
Pyrobitumen is a type of solid, amorphous organic matter. Pyrobitumen is mostly insoluble in carbon disulfide and other organic solvents as a result of molecular cross-linking, which renders previously soluble organic matter insoluble. Not all solid bitumens are pyrobitumens, in that some solid bitumens are soluble in common organic solvents, including CS
2, dichloromethane, and benzene-methanol mixtures.
