In the early 80's, I was involved with several of them, in Wyoming, Colorado, California, though not the one in Buela Montana, which apparently was the only one to survive. The alberta tar sands have been working for 20+ years and they keep improving the processing processes.
One of the bad things Regan did was to stop this experimental program, as if he had left it going, we would now have an economically viable production process.
Remember that Hitler had a viable process, and as Germany had no oil fields, all their fuel came from coal.
Reagan knew that the Soviet Union was making big bucks from sale of oil, but its costs were fairly high compared to Arab oil. By promising military aid to Saudia Arabia, and quiet negotiations, the price of oil plummeted from $30/barrel to about $10/barrel. The Soviet oil cost about $18/barrel to produce . . . so suddenly what was helping to finance their expansionist policies became a drain.
So at $30/barrel, the Arabs AND the Soviet Union benefitted, but with the Saudi's pumping excess oil out, and pricing dropped to $10/barrel . . .. the profits of everyone dropped . . . and it helped the U.S. economy recover from the Carter years . . .. and it helped bankrupt the Soviet Union.
All in all ..... a great deal!!
For those thinking that we helped to finance the Pakistani bomb . .. remember that the PROFIT levels went DOWN with the drop in prices.
The info from above came from a book about how R.Reagan set out to help push the Soviet Union into collapse.
Mike
Why not just let capitalisim discover the viable processes? Government is terrible at inventing economically viable anything. Reagan did the right thing.