Show interest being taken taen in san juan oil fie fields ids for conservative successful and extensive mining operations utah stands preem pre em anent throughout the financial and business world there is no boom attached to utah mining nothing of the sensational order for the industry has been established upon a most substantial and permanent basis and an investment in utah mines and mining securities means all that the term implies and the annual output of gold silver lead copper and zinc is constantly increasing while the volume of dividend payments yearly grows larger and larger utah is very nearly at the top of the lad der as far as met al mining is concerned next in order comes the production of coal two great industries to be sure but no greater than could be made out of numerous other resources abounding in this state for instance but little comparatively speaking has been lone done in the development of the gilsonite fuseley illustrated and in the form of a narrative awakened widespread interest in the locality mentioned which is not so very far from the san juan oil fields in san juan county a region that is now beginning to teem with activity and which is pronounced by oil experts to be one of the most promising oil fields to be found in the t fi w boi f 0 A V and mineral wax resources of utah and less attention has been paid to the possibilities of its oil industries although there are several known fields which promise wonderful things if properly handled and attended to I 1 in the last issue of the mining review attention was called to the green river oil fields in wayne county this article pro drilling rig in operation in utah oil fields west the standard of ogden U utah tali is one of the few western newspapers to call attention to the san juan oil fields a recent issue containing the following ogden and salt lake people interested jow how 1 many ogden people linow know that utah has the largest oil field in the world and one which experts declare will within a very few years be the most productive one of them all an oil field which already has 16 producing wells and not a single failure and yet none have reached below the second of eight known sands such a field is the san juan in southeastern utah where nature has not only stored great basins of petroleum of the fin est quality for refining but has pointed the way so that there need be no mistake about findan finding them while the f facts acts in relation to that remarkable field have been related occasionally in the press utah people gen generally brally appear to have failed to appreciate their import colonel A C ellis of salt lake city has been pounding away unaided in the san juan field for several years and has brought in two or three of the producing wells A syndicate of ogden citizens has done some w work ork there and that is about the extent of what has been done by utah people to de celop the new field the major portion oi of the work acco accomplished having been done by colorado capi capitalists ta lists californians are now beco becoming jiing interested inte te which means that the field is likely to be soon soo n developed the alie californians Califor niana under understand stan 1 I oil they kno the difference between an ordinary la r y field and one of 0 exceptional jl 1 merit with such reports of the san juan field in their hands as that made for california capitalists by H E peterson a san francisco engineer oil men of the coast state will lose little time in taking advantage of the opportunities which are lying wide open in southeastern utah here is the engineers report engineers glowing report the san juan oil field covers a territory approximately fifty miles wide by ninety miles in length its total area covering about square miles thus exceeding in extent of territory any known oil field in the world the field begins at a point about twenty miles west of bluff thence extends westerly fifty miles along the san juan river thence sixty five miles north and twenty five miles south of said river through the navajo indian reservation I 1 the contour shows a series of undulating hills and eroded basins with a number of low precipitous bluffs the san juan river with its great volume of water and swift current has worn a deep channel exposing to view seven distinct and intact folds and extraordinary as it may seem no true synclinal depressions appear between the anticlines anti clines the formation being intact along its original plane of bedding the dip being only ninety feet to the mile the formation consists of alternating lays oi of sandstone limestone of great porosity clay and is free from faults fractures and fissures with two exceptions one exception being a faulting along the core or axis of the anticline in the extreme western limits of the field the second is an intrusion of a schistose mass north of the river penetrating a minute area without having caused any general or visible disturbance the anticlines anti clines traverse the country from north to south and even beyond the territory herein described indications of oil were found eight distinct oil sands eight distinct oil sands are found along the san juan river showing a thorough saturation and emitting strong odors of petroleum the oil sands aggregate over feet in thickness the character of the oil bearing sandrock sand rock and fossil limestone shows considerable sid erable thickness and porosity forming the most ideal storage rocks known for so volatile a substance as petroleum the geological age of formations the exposed ranges from the cretaceous to the jurassic triassic carboniferous permian and upper devonian on the high points the cretaceous is mostly in evidence in the basin the jurassic and triassic forms the chief exposures along the banks of the river immediately adjoining the goodrich basin basin the carboniferous is shown and in the western portion of the field the permian and upper devonian appear owing to the anticline being tilted to more acute angle than ille the ones in tile the eastern part of the field sixteen wells no failures 4 present development centers in and around the goodrich basin where sixteen wells have been drilled to date without a single failure these wells have only been drilled to the second or goodrich sand and to a depth of from feet to one well at a depth of feet by actual test pumped at the rate of barrels per diem this oil is a limpid fluid of a 38 gravity base and burns readily without refining the ignition being instantaneous on the application of a lighted match the color of the oil by transmitted light is dark green it contains a high percentage of the volatile oils and is the best refining oil found in the western part of the continent jt it should be worth from to per barrel at the well specific gravity of the oil 1837 of PC Vol sacr naphtha 70 light burn 2212 heavy burn heavy oils coke and loss 41 two pipe lines and one railway have been surveyed into the field the operators to date seem to have confined their attention to striking oil in the upper sands so as to prove up their holdings at the minimum of cost and in the shortest space of time most of the companies are employing star portable rigs but a few are now ready to install heavy standard rigs for the purpose of drilling to greater depth in order to penetrate all of the known oil sands in the field worlds greatest field in froni from one to two years this will un prove the most productive as well as the largest oil field in the world the geological conditions are ideal insuring the highest degree of success while the climatic conditions leave nothing to be wished for with increasing production and continuous development railway and pine line will be constructed into the field enabling the producers to market the product at enormous profits refining oil is becoming scarcer and scarcer the appalachian fields are rapidly becoming exhausted hence the nation must look to the west and the middle west for its future oil supply |