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Show gmI lis ILL 0 " REFINEDATJ!DWEST PLANT Will Yield Two and Half Gallons From Each Thousand Cubic Feet and Add Half Million Yearly to the Earnings on Leases in Salt Creek. One plume of (he oil i ml us try In AYyoming whi'-h will mid more Ihnji a half in ill ion dollars yi-nrly to the carn-. carn-. Injis of" the owners of leases in tlu: Halt ('nrlf fol propyl- nnrl tlio Mid wont Re-fining Re-fining company, Us t lie reduction of nat-u nat-u nil kh lo gafmlinn of the highest gravity grav-ity through treatment in Hit: caring-head plant now Hearing ronipk't ion and which will be In operation by December 1. This plant will treat when working at full capacity ca-pacity nearly 4.O0U.0UO cubic feet of gas which cHcapen from the wells and which litiM hitherto been wasted and will produce pro-duce 1 wo and one-ha If gallons of gasoline gaso-line from each J 000 cubic feet, worth about lo cents a gallon. The casing head gasoline, which will average 80 gravity, is of so high a grade that it haw no commercial value except in a few industries and is so volatile that its handling in extremely dangerous. In order to make it of commercial value It will be transported from the plant, located on the edge of the field, to Casper Cas-per through a pipe line, every joint of which has been welded. On arrival at the refineries it will be introduced into the bottom of tanks containing crude naphtha or other "ends" manufactured in the. course of treatment of crude oil, enriching them so that they become available for fuel for Internal combustion engines. Thus two products which are to a certain extent wastes at present will be rendered of value. Vapor Shows Above Tanks. A visitor to the Salt Creek field (and the same is measurably true of all the other high grade oil fields of Wyoming) cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of a thin gray vapor escaping from the field tanks as the crude oil pours into them from the pipes connecting them with the wells. This is natural gaa showing show-ing color because of the change in temperature. tem-perature. In the Salt Creek the g"as is so strong that ita odor is perceptible whenever one comes within several hundred hun-dred feet of the field tanks. To catch this gas there have been installed at all these tanks "gas traps" which permit but little lit-tle of the vapor to escape, and the trapped gas is. pumped through other pipe tines to the casing head plant. This structure, contains a series of compressors compres-sors similar to those used in mining and other Industries, but modified to meet the requirements, and the compressed gas is then passed through water-cooled coils, to emerge in liquid form as gasoline. gaso-line. The highly inflammable fluid is collected col-lected In tanks and then pumped into the airtight pipe line for the fifty-five-mile journey to Casper, where it begins to assume its place among the necessaries of life. While the present flow of gas from the wells in the Salt Creek field proper is rated after a long series of tests at 4,000,000 cubic feet a day, it will be only a short time before this yield is greatly increased, as development of this field and its extensions on the east, south and west proceed. What little production produc-tion has arrived in these outlying districts dis-tricts up to this time has proved that the crude oil is of the same high grade as that found in the big wells of the main field and the volume of gas is understood un-derstood to be as large as that in the field proper. When this development is carried out to a large extent it is likely that these new wells will be connected up with the casing head plant and that the latter will be enlarged to meet the requirements re-quirements of additional production, unless un-less it should prove that a second plan more centrally located as regards the producing wells of the more remote districts dis-tricts can be more efficiently and economically eco-nomically operated. Belongs to Lease Owners. The gas arising from the wells of ;ourse belongs to the owners of the eases, lip to this time some of it has oeen used as fuel for the engines oper- a ting- drilling' rigs, and some of it for the illumination and heating of the dwellings and other buildings in the camps. Every cubic foot that is trapped for transmission to the casing head plant will be accurately metered and the owners own-ers of the lease from which it is derived will be paid on a scale dependent upon the market value of the finished product. Last year's average price in the Mid-Continent Mid-Continent field, where frequently a nun- ' drt'd or more wellB are connected up with 1 casing head plants, was 12 cents a gallon for the gasoline and the increased demand of the present with the higher prices paid for crude oil indicate that the estimate of 15 cents a gallon in Wyoming is none too high. In the parlance of the oil fields, the gas from wells which yield oil is technically tech-nically known as "wet gas," while that produced from strata which yield only gas is called "dry." The former is more readily condensed into gasoline, but there are many plants in the southwestern fields which are treating the "dry gas" profitably though with a much lower yield, sometimes as little as a pint of gasoline being extracted from 1000 cubic feet of gas. Experiments are now being made by the JYench interests represented represent-ed in Wyoming by William D. Waltman, a former Colorado Springs engineer and a graduate of the Colorado State School of Mines, to determine whether it will be profitable to attempt gasoline production produc-tion from the enormous gas wells owned by these interests in Buffalo and Oregon basins. Jf this gas, which flows at from 6,000,000 cubic feet daily in one well to 15.000,000 in another, can be treated at .- profit, Wyoming's gasoline yield will T increased enormously, as these fields ;i only in the infancy of their development. |