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Show Utah's Mineral Industry Outlook for 1 975 Is Extremely Good, Specialists Predict Mineral industry op- erstots in Huh are e- njndiS t,ui1' i"tsts ind re-evaluation mineral min-eral deposits in the state. Many requests for Information on natural resources flow to the i'Uh Geological Sur-veV Sur-veV office (iiim all 0'er the United States. Companies in the eastern east-ern states who have not et ventured into the 'nest's vast mineral resources re-sources are now turning jtjeir attention to I'tah. Operators term 1974 s one of the bene r yea rs n the oil and gas drilling drill-ing business. Expectations Expecta-tions are high that drill -ing during 1975 will far exceed that of 1974. Several Sev-eral copper companies nave multi-million dollar dol-lar programs in force through '1975 and Urani- Emn operations plan extensive ex-tensive exploration and J development of re-I re-I serves. Mill construc-, construc-, tion at Utah's Park City jrea is on schedule and iv- new work force is un- derway. New plant construction con-struction for coal burning burn-ing power-plants: oil shale development; bitu minous sandstone research re-search and extraction are underway; new plans and objectives for geo-thermal geo-thermal research leasing, leas-ing, and development are being formed, and mineral min-eral extraction from the i Great Salt Lake are all 1 ! lending much emphasis 1 : to a busy year in Utah. 1 Bright spots in the mi-I mi-I nerals industry, as they 1 affect Southeastern Utah I have been outlined by J Minerals Specialist Carlton Stowe as fol-! fol-! Ions: - Utah's Oil Shale Tracts: Each 5,120 acre tracts were leased last year for more than $120.7 million. The Department De-partment of Interior estimates es-timates that approximately approxi-mately 510.2 million barrels of oil are contained con-tained in the. 71 4 million tons of shale in mine-"able mine-"able beds beneath the tw o tracts. Tar Sand Deposits: Near Asphalt Ridge, just west of Vernal, extensive exten-sive Utah Geological and Mineral Survey work has been done. Industrial interests in-terests have been attracted at-tracted for possible de-velopment. de-velopment. " Uranium Development: Atlas Minerals plans ex- tensive exploration and development of its Sage Uranium property about I miles east of Monti - cello. Expansion of the Lisbon Mill up to 700 tons per day capacity ;ti;' i" also significantly . affect the area south of -b' Moab. Exploration is 7l planned in the Green Ri-' Ri-' ver area with possible plans calling for a con-- con-- centrator in the vicinity. 7 J Coal: The Indiana and Michigan Electric Com-Pany Com-Pany has contracted to buy 140 million tons of fr1 low-sulfer Utah coal over a 25-year period - from the Braztah Cor- 6J( Poration. The Northwest Pipeline Company is conducting a feasibility 6 study of an 820 mile (X Pipeline moving coal in slurry form from Utah and surrounding states Points in Oregon, Ida -t& Jo, and Northern California. The Braztah Corporation, Corpora-tion, a subsidiary of Mc-Culloch Mc-Culloch Oil Co., iscom-Q iscom-Q nutted to produce 140 mi"ion tons for American Ameri-can Electric Power Co., er the next 25 years, 'ne annual rate of production pro-duction for that project ls. expected to peak at y 'million tons by 1982. Four mines are now operating north of Huntington Hun-tington Canyon in the atch Plateau Field ;'tn a combined annual "age of 1.2 million ns for the commercial dustrial market in Jwo mines on the south ,'de of Huntington Can-f" Can-f" supplied most of 1 rf! Power and Light , 197iS needs in Utah , A li i, Producing some li oil hon tons. In 1974. I ZTny completed and iMP?d its first 430-l7r.en 430-l7r.en 5att Huntington bdiHn unit. and is 0luldlnR another for completion in 1977. Coastal States Energy's Ener-gy's Convulsion Canyon Minos has doubled its production from 300.000 to 700,000 tons in 1974 for its industrial and commercial markets. The I nt e rnunmtain Project, involving a group of Utah and Southern South-ern California users and utilities, plans construction con-struction of a 3,000 megawatt meg-awatt plant in northern Wayne County using either ei-ther Emery County or Henry Mountains coal. If the Kaiparowits Power Po-wer Project gets started this year, it will involve a final capacity of 3,000 megawatts. That could mean the mining of some nine to 20 million tons of coal annually by 19S5. Nevada Electric is now planning a power plant to be built at Warner War-ner Valley near St. George Geo-rge and at a site near Las Vegas. The coal would come as a slurry from the Alton field to fuel the plants, which would have a capacity of 1.000 to 1.500 megawatts each. This could involve the annual mining of be- t tween three to 4.5 million mil-lion tons of coal. Deep Oil andGas Drilling Drill-ing Forecast: In the past two years, deep drilling . . . to depths below 15.000 feet . . . has placed pla-ced Utah in the number one spot within the Rocky-Mountain Rocky-Mountain Region. Especially Espe-cially during 1974 when Utah accounted for 26 of the 31 deep tests completed com-pleted in the western states. Throughout 1974, northeastern Utah's deep Tertiary trend in the Uinta Basin claimed most attention. More significantly, is the fact that some 28 deep tests were being carried on drilling reports in Utah at the close of the year. Thus. 1975 should see a tremendous new record established in the State for deep drilling. The state drilling record re-cord was broken by Phillips Phil-lips Petroleum at its potentially po-tentially significant Cordilleran "hingeline" exploratory well in Sanpete San-pete County. Phillips drilled the w ell to a total depth of 20.450 feet and also set a new record-depth record-depth for running casing. It was cased to 20.430 feet. Several new exploratory ex-ploratory holes are expected ex-pected to be drilled along the "Hingeline" this vear. New drilling is planned plan-ned in the Coalville area as a result of a new Nugget Nug-get formation discovery drilled by American Quasar Petroleum, Energetics En-ergetics Inc., and North Central Oil. The well, 12 miles east of Coalville Coal-ville flowed oil at rates as high, as 35 barrels an hour from the formation. forma-tion. New oil and gas leasing was stimulated in the area to the north, reaching into Morgan,. Cache and Rich Counties and to the west and south. It is quite likely that drilling will be undertaken under-taken in the near future. Exploratory drilling interest in Utah was widespread during 1974. It is expected that during dur-ing 1975 widespread interest in-terest will again domin ate. The Paradox Basin region south of Moab will see extensive exploratory explora-tory drilling done. The Book Cliffs Region north of Cisco and Crescent Junction will also have several wells drilled as a result of new gas and oil discoveries drilled recently in the Blaze Canyon and Cisco Springs vicinity. Development Devel-opment work in the Aneth fields will also remain strong. Interest in the State is centered on a deep exploratory test in Wasatch Wa-satch County, about 24 miles southwest of the Altamont - Bluebell trend. Chevron Oil started a scheduled 17,-500 17,-500 foot test in the Strawberry Reservoir area. ' If this well is a success, deep drilling could easily be scattered scatter-ed throughout the vicinity. vicin-ity. New gas areas were opened in Carbon County as well as in the southern south-ern area of Uintah County Coun-ty . lending emphasis to additional work projected project-ed for the new horizons. And, in the Monlicello area of San Juan County, il is I ikely that new work will be accomplished during li75. Oil Shale and Oil Sand Activity: Two oil shale projects in eastern Uintah Uin-tah County involving underground un-derground mining and surface processing are under way in preliminary prelimin-ary stages. Another project, pro-ject, a small experiment in which it is proposed to mine out underground chimneys and use them as retorts, is in the proposal pro-posal stage. The mining projects, one by White River Shale Oil (Sun. Sohio and Phillips) and the second by Tosco (The Oil Shale Corporation) eventually will cost $1.8 to 2 billion andareplan-ned andareplan-ned to be in production in the early 19S0's. The in situ experiment is sponsored by Cameron Engineers and TRW Systems Sys-tems and Energy under a U.S. Bureau of Mines research program. Unlike Un-like oil shale activity in neighboring Colorado which has slowed or halted in some instances, in-stances, "all systems are go" for Utah projects. pro-jects. Three projects in oil sands (tar sands) are also proposed or under way in Utah. Open pit mining on Asphalt Ridge south of Vernal will begin be-gin in 1975, and the material ma-terial mined will be processed pro-cessed in two pilot plants, one by Arizona Fuels (Major Oil) and another by Fairbrim, Inc., Salt Lake City. The plants are tobe operated at the mine. Arizona Fuels expects a scale up operations to provide feedstock for its nearby near-by Roosevelt refinery. The U. S. Bureau of Mines has begun drilling drill-ing core holes for its experiment to produce oil from' oil sand (tar sand) in place by a technique tech-nique known as a reserv e combustion fire flcx)d. The project is to be ignited ig-nited in summer 1975 and is expected to pro duce 1000 or so barrels of oil from beneath a few acres. Site is about 4 miles west of Maeser, Utah in the Northwest Asphalt Ridge deposit. In southeast Wayne County, in the giant Tar Sand Triangle deposit. Oil Development Company Com-pany of Utah has proposed pro-posed another fireflood project to recover oil in place from the White Rim Sandstone. Local and regional approvals for this project have been received, but final environmental clearance clear-ance is awaited froifl Washington. Site of the proposed fireflood borders bor-ders the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and is a few miles west of Canyonlands National Na-tional Park. Although this oil shale and oil sand activity is of great importance to the U.S. energy program and Utah's economy, international inter-national and domestic economic and political moves could adversely affect development. If oil prices were tobear-tificiall.v tobear-tificiall.v depressed by the international oil cartel, car-tel, oil shale and oil sand activity could not long survive. If rampant inflation in-flation continues, the cost of the giant new plants cannot be justified justi-fied or capital obtained. One project in Colorado has already been suspended sus-pended for this reason. If unreasonable environmental environ-mental restraints are demanded, adding even more costs, other projects pro-jects will be abandoned. If water can not be found to support the proposed plants, construction will halt or plant sizes will be curtailed. All of these matters will demand attention at-tention in 1975 and for years to come. Oil shale and oil sands will stand or fall on decisions made in Denver or Washington or Teheran or elsewhere. else-where. In general Utah can hx)k for an intersting and active year in oil shale and oil sands. The impact of this activity could easily change the face of northeast Utah and the life style of its population. |