Salt Lake Tribune | 1918-06-09 | Page 42 | Oil Sands of San Rafael Basis for Big Industry

Oil Sands of San Rafael Basis for Big Industry Gigantic Reefs Contain Almost Inexhaustible Supply of Petroleum; Difference Between Sands and Shales Explained. By L. E. CAMM0MIL3. 1'rom its portal. Three levels were or-ned ir.t'n t'ne in.ve. The Xo. 11 level has entered a body ui ore having dinien-f:uBi dinien-f:uBi not tiillv deie;-:i'ined. bin "ti'?oe J in an area of 10y bv li'.'U feet so far. 'T ha'e been told rhe company was earning a fortune even month from its prod ort ion of ore, hob-ted by bucket through the winze. This sueeta completion com-pletion of a three-compartmeut shaft being mnk at the portal of the tunnel. It is said to have earned 100n a month to the man in the glory hole period of operations, when forty " to tixty men were at work. "The ore i a greenish blue, fine granular gran-ular ar-'ilite. It lies in a sedimentary zone. I was told the ore contained 2ai to 3 per eeut copper, a tenth of an ounce of gold and two ounces of silver to the ton. The Goodrich brothers, members of the rubber manufacturing ramily, are in the army. Kmmett Gil-lijjan Gil-lijjan is manager, W. h. Hiser. mill superintendent, su-perintendent, and Fred Anderson, mine superintendent. 'The equipment includes a flotation plant of 150 tons capacity, 250U feet from the railroad. The ' product is piped to a filter press on the railroad, where it is loaded into cars.'' Greenough and Price saw the Copper Dike, formerly the Macdougal mine, in the copper glance side of the same district, dis-trict, a manganese deposit on Snake river, tho Gilmore lead deposit of Idaho, and the manganese deposits of Philips-burg, Philips-burg, Mont., in the course of their journey, made in a Ford car. They saw somo deposits of rare minerals, of which they thiuk enough of to inspect again." Spokesman-Review. A 8 a result of recent publicity in western magazines and newspapers, newspa-pers, inquiry baj developed for more information concerning the outcropping oil-saturated sand reet'n of the ,Shi i.'al'ael oil field. Kvidently all that haa so far been said and written about these unusual and unique deposits has created a confusion of ideas as to just what they are. Much of this eon-fusion eon-fusion results, probably, because investigators investi-gators have not vet learned completely the difference betwecu oil -saturated s.ands and oil shales. Jn explanation, it should be btated there is just as much difference between oil shales and oil-saturated sands as there is between the z.inc ores (ft Missouri Mis-souri and tho gold ores of California, while there is even greater difference in tho processes employed to treat the would be mure than offset by the weight of the oil. This is super-saturation, and engineers who have investigated investi-gated conditions express the unqualified unquali-fied opinion that, as tho sands are mined and removed from the face of the reef the oil will continue to move to the front and keep the ' ' saturation 5 ' at a high mark for an indefinite number num-ber of years a greater number of yearn than present generations will be ablo to keep track of. As a protection against the escape of the oils through the face or outcrop of these sands nature has played an important part. The heat of summer draws the oil toward the surface and the porous sand rock becomes coated; then the winds blow the drifting sands from the flats uuder the escarpment against the oil and paraffin-soaked surface. During the cool nights the sands and shales and recover the product. prod-uct. The contents of the so-called oil shales can only be recovered through destructive distillation processes employing em-ploying various degrees of heat and complicated com-plicated apparatus. The oil sands are simply a combination or mixture of crude petroleum and sjflid, and to separate sepa-rate the sand particles from the oil is so simple and. so inexpensive, by comparison com-parison with methods of treating oil shales, as to seem almost ridiculous. The San Rafael oil field covers an area of about thirty by forty miles in Emery, Wayne and Garfield counties. Its northern boundary is marked by the San Rafael river, where it runs from tho west to the east and emptios into tho Green river about eighteen miles south of Greenriver station on the Rio Grande railroad in Emery countv. The eastern limit of the field is marked by the Green river between the San Rafaei and the Grand rivers. The southwestern limits of tho field are bounded by the Colorado river, from the point of junction junc-tion of the Green and Grand rivers. The southwestern portion of the field is marked bv the Fremont or Dirty Devil river, while the northwest portion of the field is marked by the Castle ridge, dividing the field from the ''San Rafael Ra-fael Swell," which has been reserved by the government as a naval oil reserve. re-serve. Condition Unique. Everyone is familiar with the manner in which wells are drilled for oil; how the various strata of oil-bearing sands in the oil fields of the country are prospected, pros-pected, and how some of them make good while a much larger percentage of them fail to produce. In this San Rafael district a condition exists that is probably without parallel in the oil fields of this country, if not in the world. Along the south and southeastern limits lim-its of the San Rafael oil field the combined com-bined erosivo action of the Green, Grand and Colorado rivers has cut down through the original surface contour of the country for thousands of feet. This process of erosion has gone on until great reefs of identically the same oil-saturated oil-saturated sands that are sought and drilled for to depths of thousands of feet in the regulation oil fields have been cut through and exposed on the surface (in the side) of the reefs or escarpments. At one place for a distance of approximately approx-imately nine miles along the meander line of the escarpment or reef, there is a bedding of oil-saturated sand that will average close to 300 feet thick. This bedding of oil-saturated sand has a paraffin base, and all of the tests and samplings that have been done make it conservatively certain that a production produc-tion approximating sivty-five gallons of crude petroleum can be easily and simply, sim-ply, as well as inexpensively, obtained from each ton of this sand that is mined and treated. So extensive and so free from all foreign substances is this particular par-ticular reef of sand, that it is feasible to mine it with steam shovels. Underlying this bedding of paraffin-base paraffin-base sand, and separated from it by a layer of heavy, impervious sandstone, is a second layer of oil-saturated sand with an asnhaltum base. Still deener suriace hardens and the oozing or the oil is checked. This performance is repeated re-peated again and again through the summer months so that, by the time winter rolls around, the "surface is practically sealed from one end of the outcropping reef to the other for months ahead. When warm weather approaches again some portion of the face of the reef will slough off and the sealing process will .be renewed. Under these conditions, it is submitted, submit-ted, there is good reason to believe that following the penetration of this oil-bearing reef from the face of the deposit flows of crude petroleum will be secured, just as a flow of oil might be secured in a deep well that had been drilled into the deposit at a favorable point miles away from the outcrop of these sands, with the almost inestimable inestim-able advantage of minimum cost in securing se-curing the flow. By this means, and the proposed methods of treating the mined sands, practically all of the oil impounded in the reef, rather than tho 60 to 75 per cent limit to be exacted in drilling operations, should be obtained. ob-tained. Production Cost Low. It can be stated as an abstract proposition prop-osition that the production of crude petroleum from these exposed rands will be limited only by the capacity of the plants installed. No intricate or specially-built devices are necessary to separate the sands from the crude oil. Everything necessary for the equipment equip-ment of properties can be purchased in the mining machinery markets of Denver Den-ver and Salt Lake. A plant that has .been designed for one company preparing prepar-ing to operate on the reef having a capacity ca-pacity tor treating 100 tons of sand aaily, with the crushing department capable of handling more than double that tonnage, will cost approximately $100,000, figured on war-prices basis for everything. The features of the process to be employed em-ployed embrace two sets of crushing rolls one coarse and one fine feeding feed-ing devices to carry the crushed oil sands to the "washing" tanks, tanks for the reception of the oils washed irom the sands by a gasoline solution, and a still through which to recover Ue gasoline solution for further use in charging the "washing" tanks, and a means of discharging the "washed" sands to the dump. Through this method of treatment it is figured that the loss in "washing" solution will not be in excess of 5 per cent of the amount used, or about one-fifth one-fifth of a gallon per ton of sand, worth, at prevailing prices about 5 cents. Competent mining, milling and chemical experts who are working on the details of this business, have no hesitancy in stating that the sands can be mined and placed in the works for less than 30 cents a ton; that the crushing, washing, tanking and pumping pump-ing of the product into the pipe-line intakes, will not represent more and it may be much less than 75 cents per ton of sand handled. While rough estimates es-timates have been made on a basis of 50 cents per ton for mining and $1.25 as the total cost of placing the product into the pipe lines, assurance is given by the engineers that it never need exceed ex-ceed $1.00 per ton. is another layer of oil sand that, for most part, underlies the flat country at the base of the big reef. Sands Supersaturated. With respect to the source of saturation satura-tion of the great reef of oil sands which outcrop as previously stated in this paper, pa-per, every investigation, ranging 'over a period of years, establishes the fact that it is permanent and practically inexhaustible. in-exhaustible. The geology of the entire San Rafael field is so easily readable that it would be next to impossible to make a mistake. Everywhere there ;s evidence that the oil-bearing sand strata are uniform and continuous for many miles back into the field from the outcrop out-crop or southern exposures of the sands, where the surface saturation is uniform and continuous. That the degree of saturation of these sands will be found to increase as the reef is penetrated from the face or surface sur-face of the deposit, there is not the slightest question of doubt. These oil-bearing oil-bearing sand strata have a slight inclination incli-nation or pitch from the horizontal north-northwesterly ui 144 feet to the mile from the southern outcrop, and the great pressure of the hundreds to thousands thou-sands of feet of overlying formation as t'ne northern portion of the field is approached, ap-proached, suggest the conclusion that this earth pressure, augmented by the pressure of gases generated in the oil, will exert a constant influence in causing caus-ing the oils to gravitate toward the southern outcroppings limits of the reef. Contention has been advanced that a claim of anything liko sixty-five gallons of crude petroleum to the ton of sand is unjustifiable and absurd; that it would be impossible to get more than twenty. eight to thirty-five gallons gal-lons to the ton, as the sand would not hold or absorb more than that. If that contention were based on fact there would be no such things as "gushers"' in the oil fields. At" innumerable innu-merable points along the outcrop of the San Rafael saturated oil-sand reef crude petroleum escapes through crev-aces crev-aces and fractures to an extent that indicates a highly super-saturated condition con-dition of the oil-sand deposit underlv-ing underlv-ing the field; and the same condition is shown in the fact that, for everv foot's penetration into the sands from the outcropping surface more and more oil is found in the sand. Sealed by Nature. In fact, it is not unusual to find the sand in a 'mushy-' state of saturation a foot or two back of the surface where the weight of the sand itself :