Oil Shale & Tar Sands Leasable Land

More than 800,000 acres of federal public lands in the Colorado River Basin have been allocated by the Bureau of Land Management as available for oil shale and tar sands leasing. View the map ›

Leasable land in the Colorado River Basin

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Resource - map credit Stephanie Smith

Maps and graphs may be used for non-commercial purposes provided that they are not altered or edited and they are appropriately credited. All map products should be credited to Stephanie Smith, Grand Canyon Trust, unless otherwise noted. A hyperlink to the Grand Canyon Trust website is appreciated.

For higher quality images or custom sizing please contact our communications director, Ashley Davidson, at adavidson@grandcanyontrust.org.

Related Resources

The Grand Canyon Trust and Deseret Power signed a settlement agreement over a sizable water right (15 cubic-feet per second, or 3.5 billion gallons per year). Deseret Power acquired the water right from Enefit American Oil Co., an Estonian state-owned oil shale company aiming to build a massive oil shale mining and processing facility in northern […]

The Estonian state-owned oil shale company, Enefit American Oil, relinquished a preliminary lease to research the commercial viability of mining and producing oil shale on public land in northeastern Utah. Enefit has proposed a massive development on 13,000 acres of private land and 4,960 acres of federal public land in the Uinta Basin. By relinquishing its 160-acre […]

In November 2021, the Grand Canyon Trust filed a protest with the Utah Division of Water Rights arguing it is unlawful for Deseret Power to hold onto a nearly 10-million-gallon-per-day water right on the Green River ostensibly for electricity generation when in fact a deal with Estonian-owned oil shale company Enefit shows that Deseret Power […]