Salt Lake Tribune | 1919-12-19 | Page 19 | Mina Operators Plan Oil Drilling Activity

MINA OPERATORS PLAN OIL DRILLING ACTIVITY Special to The Tribune. MINA, N'ev., Dec. IS. The prevailing oil excitement has struck Mina, and a small group of mining- operators hero has secured perpetual leases on about 6000 acres of oil land in Colusa county, about eleven miies from Williams. Cnl. Tho outstanding feature of the ground leased is 11 tremendous outcrop of oil shales, which has been traced for a width ot trom coo to S.'O feet, and a lengih of about five miles, most of which is on the new company's ground. This shale Is said to be extremely rich in an excellent grade of oil. tests having been made which indicate in-dicate a production of from sixtv to eighty gallons of oil per ton of shale. The right to mine and treat this shale is to bo leased on a royalty basis, tentative arrangements having already been made to this efliet. As far as known, tills w ill be the first plant for treating oil shale to be established in California. The company will proceed at once to start drilling at a spot where some vears ago local men had struck a very iiigh-gr.ide iiigh-gr.ide lubricating oil at a depth of about 00 feet. Not content with this showing, drilling was continued to 9oo feet, at which point the tools stuck and the well was abandoned. Two more wells were started soon after, one of which met the same fate and the other struck gas at 12o0 feet, but, the treasury being exhausted, ex-hausted, nothing further was attempted. The new company has been named "The, Mountainhouse Standard Oil companv." ami is incorporated under the laws of Nevada, Ne-vada, with a capitalization of 2,000,000 shares. Teh officers are: rresident. F. n. House: vice president. R. G. Mcrtonald; secretary and treasurer, B. V. Zachau, all o: Mina. These three, with Dr. A. S. Abdun-Nur, also of Mina, are the principal prin-cipal owners. Among the mining men who have been in Mina during the past few days are M. H. Gidel of the Anaconda Mining company com-pany of Butte. Mont.: tV". V. DeCamp. , representing the "Western Metallurgical company and the Consolidated Arizona Smelting company, Humboidt. Ariz.; I-. A. Otto, Humboidt. Ariz., and Jasper T. Robertson of San Francisco. Mr. Robertson Robert-son was here In the Interests of Logan & Bryan, who are Interested hi mining property in this district.