Show utah soon to supplant waning petroleum supply an argument for the industry and a boost for utah by J B jenson it is now some years sin since ce the petro were the subject of large interest among both public and private individuals divi duals from the economic value of their oil producing possibilities and not a few people spent time and money in locating b and acquiring acreage with the expectation that there would immediately arise a demand for their acreage some have endeavored to keep up their assessment work and maintain their holdings which must otherwise revert to T F mulkh grade shale tit nt soldier summit utah the government and again be merged into a large acreage of shale land which cannot then be again acquired by individuals but must remain the property of the united states government to be operated under tile the leasing law only and as s the leasing bill is not a practical one from the shale operators standpoint all such land as passes back to the government must presumably lie dormant for many years unless someone familiar with shale operations shall be able mining engineer and oil technologist salt lake city to affect a complete revision by congress of that portion of the leasing law which applies to shale which will probably not occur for some years the shale industry has been poo maligned and misrepresented P resented to the average t man in this country for some years past until he has come to look upon this most wonderful and valuable resource as something absolutely without value he has been told that there is no known process that will successfully treat the american on a commercial scale and he has therefore made no effort to secure for himself his portion of this wealth making acreage which the law intended should remain among the masses of the people to build up their community and not to be acquired for monopoly by a few captains of industry in the meantime shrewd business men capitalists and large corporations have been and are now carefully acquiring the cream of the oil shale acreage in enormous tracts carrying the same to patent and securing title just as rapidly as possible shale oil plants needed now it is not a question of process that is holding back this great industry but one of conditions and just as soon as conditions warrant then the industry will be ushered in and that time is near at hand much nearer than some would have us believe for just now the great problem that is confronting and nd troubling our geologists and petroleum engineers is how shall we prevent the exhaustion of our wells and subsequent oil shortage and possibly oil famine at the th e present rate of pumping of crude oil we cannot expect it to last more than 15 or 20 years if we had no other resources than those of our petroleum wells for the supply of oil the conditions would be critical the must supply a large proportion of our future oil and in order that they may do this without interruption or shortage we must take immediate steps towards the construction of shale oil plants for at best it will require several years to build enouf enough p plants ants to offset the waning supply from the wells and the increased consumption cons emption in this country alone how oil came to be during early tertiary times or the beginning of the eocene period millions of years before the advent of man upon the earth great reptiles and ponderous birds had held sway for ages then the great rocky mountain revolution devolution took place which raised raided our central plains from the ocean bed to their present position forced up two new ranges canoes of mountains the uinta and the wasatch anu ana at the same time formed the uintah and green river lakes two great inland fresh water bodies the bottoms of which constitute today the uinta and green river basins reaching from rifle colorado on the east to juab utah on the west and to a point some miles north of the town of rock springs wa wyoming wyoming A change in climate occurred also great reptiles began to disappear and mami mammals nals replaced them the earliest ancestor of the horse the eohippus or dawn norse a small fox like animal with three hoofed toes and whose remains are today found in the sediments of the green river basin made his appearance great torrential rains and spring freshets fresh ets carried the soil from the newly made mountains and deposited it as mud and ooze on the bottom of the new lakes A luxuriant growth of algae and similar mossy plants resembling Z very much the green mossy growth we now see on the bottoms of stagnant pools in summer together with leaf like fresh water plants soon covered the shores and bottoms of these lakes only to be covered shortly themselves thern selves by the sediment of another freshet together with other vegetable and animal matter from the surrounding mountains and on oil the new deposit of rich fine grained rained clay and soil immediately sprang another luxuriant growth alternate vegetable growths and sedimentary deposits continued for thousands of years until the lake bottom had been filled to a depth of hundreds of feet if for some cause one season did not produce a growth of vegetation the resulting deposit of clay contained no vegetable matter and formed only a barren clay measure from the oscillating movement of the water and mud under tremendous water pressure often many tons to the square inch the vegetable remains became finely mas and ground into the sediments and after possible microscopic action finally became a part of them occasionally great mineral hearing bearing ledges extending through the mountains were eroded away and the sand and clay from these together with such gold silver and platinum as they contained also found their way into the lake bottoms thereby building up tip at times beddings which were more or less and ranging in thickness from the fraction us of an inch to many feet I 1 in time climatic conditions changed vegetable growth crowth on oil the lake bottom ceased but millions of tons ol 01 of earth continued tobe to be deposited and built up on the lake bottom producing thereby also great sandstone measures under which was developed tremendous pressure and heat the remains of the partly decomposed vegetation were compressed and preserved within the clays and through earth heat and coni compression these were converted into solid rock later great earth upheavals raised the portion which was then the lake bottom and the mass of water drained off to the south through what is at present known as the colorado river during the ages of time that have followed great canyons and gorges have been cut through these deposits by streams of water and exposed great escarpments of shale showing the original beddings so thick and so rich in vegetable remains that they form today what is conceded to be 16 the greatest deposits of high grade in the world extent and volume of western by the of the west then we mean those lying on oil the western slope of the rocky mountains and located in utah colorado and wyoming and which were once the bottom of a great inland hiland fresh i water lake constituting what wha t is now known as the uintah uinta h and green river basins while almost every nation has its shale deposits thuoc ot 01 the western slope are admitted to be the greatest deposits of high grade oil yielding in the world anu ana the industry which america is about to usher in is one of her greatest one in every way equal to the great petroleum industry and which will eventually eventually y outrank it in importance not how ever coming as a competitor to enter the field against petroleum but to augment the oil supply and prolong the life of the rapidly dying oil wells and when they shall finally have become exhausted then to replace what has come to be the nations lifeblood life blood petroleum eum or rock oil with the new shale oil which for convenience let us call pe meaning also rock oil this gives us the two forms petroleum and pe petroleum natures product from the ground the product made by man from there is in utah shale fields enough high grade shalto I 1 produce more than twenty four billion barvels barrels of and of the leaner which will be worked later enous enough b to produce one and one half times more or a total of more than sixty billions of barrels there is enough shale in colorado to produce a similar amount of pe if this shale is treated for economys sake in plants having a capacity of 1000 tons per day or over it has a net value after all expenses of mining crushing retorting and brefini refining i nr have been deducted of per ton or a total value in utah alone of more than two hundred eighty billions of dollars not millions mind you but BILLIONS do you fully comprehend what a billion means we have become so accustomed to using large figures of late that we are apt to speak of billions for instance did you ever dver stop to think that therease there ther eare re but a little l nore more filan one and one half billion human beings b of ail colors and kinds on the earth or that it is only a little more than one billion minutes since christ was crucified take your pencil and figure it birth and growth of petroleum industry last year we pumped our wells at the rate of approximately barrels a day and if some people had their way they would pump our wells dry in a year but fortunately for our great t grandchildren and their great great grandchildren nature has left by far the greatest portion of her oil makin making b material locked locke d up in the as embryo petroleum N where unlike free petroleum it can neither be dissipated nor wasted but must remain preserved until needed and utilized by man by being retorted and converted into oil when the pilgrim t fathers first set foot on the amerlan continent the san sand d held no less than 1412 billion barrels of petroleum which had been retorted and stored up by nature but the pilgrim father did not know this and eve even if lie he had known it it is doubtful if he could have obtained it or utilized it for he had no oil burning lamps no steam t boilers no automobiles 0 or farm tractors he soon learned to make oil from shale sha le and coal and when james young took out his patents on a shale retort in the man nw plants were erected by our people in this country under license from the young company most of which produced coal oil from coal or petroleum rock oil from shale e principally from the deposits in virginia kentucky aaa aa missouri fifty five of these plants were in operation and the industry was becoming exceedingly promising when EL drake manager of the seneca oil company on oil the day of august 1859 after feet drilling a depth of sixty nine suddenly dropped his drill int into 0 a bed of oil sand bri bringing 0 in in an oil well which yielded between 15 and 25 bals per day and which produced during the first year nearly 2000 barrels of crude oil other wells were drilled in rapid succession and ta the infant shale industry was caused to suspend the shale it plants being converted into oil refineries and the teri term petroleum or 4 rock oil underground being applied to the oil by which name it has since been known the petro petroleum leuin industry however was by no means the Z gigantic gig 1 antic institution that it is today for many years the consumption banged ran ed only between two and three million barrels per year and brought only a few cents per barrel compare this with last year when we produced in this country more then or barrels per day being equal to 62 per cent of the world production since that memorable day when drake brought the first oil to the surface we have extracted from our underground pools barrels and one half of this has been taken from the ground during the last seven and one half years or since the world war began f A recent careful survey of the known oil fields in the united states by the geological survey assisted by ten of our most prominent representatives of the american association of petroleum geologists has been made and it is estimated that there are barrels remaining in the ground of which five billion barrels is classified as oil in sight an and four billion barrels as prospective or 1 possible oil petroleum needs rapidly increasing within the next three years our merchant marine will need approximately barrels of fuel oil per year our navy constin consumed ed last year approximately bari aels and this will increase annually in 1911 we had automobiles at the end of 1921 there were registered in the united states approximately ten and a half million requiring an average of more inore than ten barrels each of gasoline per year and it is estimated that by 1924 we shall have at least thirteen and a half millions in addition to these there are thousands of trucks tra tractors actors airplanes and stationary engines engines b all requiring fuel to supply these we 5 drained last year in the united states according to statistics of the president of one of our largest producing oil companies acres of oil land and we must acquire a alike 6 like amount of productive acrea acreage 6 c durin during 6 1923 to maintain our present production the cost of acquiring it including royalty drilling lifting and wildcatting tung will depre t sent a total outlay of or nearly 2 per barrel our consumption is therefore increasing at the rate of nearly fifty million barrels per year and we shall very shortly be consuming barrels annually at which rate our reserves can last only between fifteen and twenty years C there is today perhaps yio no single substance that is more essential or that contributes more to the contort com rort tort the progress the increased new wealth than oil we need it for our autor automobiles bobiles no biles our airplanes and our factories it has made possible the thousands of mechanical devices that tenter enter into everyday life to reduce labor in the nome the field the factory it lias has largely replaced coal on oil our rail roads and our great reat ships are rapidly being v inverted on averted to oil burners civi giving ng greater cargo space gre greater ater speed and seducing cing labor and operating costs it has been the means of winging bringing to perfection the automobile the airplane and the submarine three great inventions that were predicted years jears ago in that most wonderful prophesy made by mother er shiffon shipton in a little english village when she said carriages without horses shall go and accidents fill the world with woe voe around the world thoughts will fly i in the twinkling of an eye waters shall yet more wonders do now strange shall yet be true i the world upside down shall be y and gold shall be found at root of tree through hills man shall ride and no horse nor ass be ac his side under water henshall men shall walk shall ride shall sleep shall talk in the air men shall be seen in white in black in green iron in the water shall float As easy asa wooden boat gold shall be found mid stone in a land now unknown fire and water shall wonders do england shall at last admit a jew and this world to an end shall come in nineteen hundred and eighty one when mother shipton saw gold at foot of tree and gold mid stone in a land then unknown her visionary eye must have b been een opened on utah with her vast mineral wealth both grass rass mining I 1 and deep mining who knows but what she also saw in her vision the greatest copper mine in the world the utah copper or our great shale ledges pouring forth an unbroken stream oi 01 motor fuel to make carriages without horses to go J 7 oil produced not extracted from shale oil is not extracted from shale as some suppose any any more than whiskey is extracted from corn it is made from it it is the vegetable matter which is converted into oil when heated in the absence of air to a temperature high enous enough rh to effect the decomposition or destructive distillation regardless of whether this be done by nature |