Springville Herald | 1948-03-18 | Page 3 | Bureau of Mines Eye Utah for Synthetic Oil

BUREAU OF MINES EYE UTAH FOR SYNTHETIC OIL The U. S. Bureau of Mines is eyeing Utah's mighty coal deposits as a possible source for the production pro-duction of synthetic oil and gasoline. gaso-line. The bureau has proposed i spending. $900.000, 000 to construct 75 plants throughout the nation in any of the 20 coal producing states Utah is one of the states prominently prom-inently mentioned. Utah's coal resources re-sources cover 13,000 square miles and constitute approximately 196,-000,000,000 196,-000,000,000 tons of coal. The bureau is also interested in producing oil from Utah oil shale deposits. The production of oil from shale, it was pointed out, will be limited to "four states, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Nevada. The bureau points out that the proposed synthetic program would tremendously increase domestic mining of coal and oil shales. Utah's oil shale outcrops cover approximately 2,500,000 acres which show a yield of from practically prac-tically no oil up to 60 or 70 gal-j gal-j Ions per ton. The richest oil I shales are found in the area west of Green River and eastward to the Colorado line in the Uintah Basin immediately north of the Book Cliffs. It is estimated by the Bureau of Mines that 75,000,000,-000 75,000,000,-000 barrels of recoverable oil are present in the oil shales of Utah.