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Show Shale Process Test Due After Pact Signing Private financing of a $7.5 million program to test a new process for extracting oil and gas from oil shale neared completion Oct. 3, with the signing of Sun Oil and a consortium repre-sented repre-sented by Webb Resources, Re-sources, Inc., of Denver, Colorado. Sun, a major petroleum company, has pioneered in the development of tar sands. Webb is one of the most active, independent exploration companies in the Rocky Mountain area. The two brought to 12 the number of companies participating at $500,000 each for a total of $6 million. Three more companies are expected to join soon to complete the planned 15-company venture. Webb Resources, an oil and gas firm, is representing repre-senting a group investing $500,000 in the program as a unit--Webb, Gary Operating Co. and Jerry Chambers Oil Producer, all of Denver. Preparatory work already al-ready is underway on the scheduled 30-month pro ject to test a process and hardware invented by Par a ho Development Corp. of Denver. Thepro-gram Thepro-gram will be conducted at the Anvil Points oil shale facilities of the Bureau of Mines near Rifle, Colorado leased from the federal government. govern-ment. Preparation of the existing ex-isting facilities at Anvil Points was begun in early September, a month ahead of schedule, immediately after the first ten participating partic-ipating companies authorized auth-orized launching the program pro-gram without further delay. The ten companies compan-ies approved on August 31, 1973 a two-step approach, ap-proach, based on the $5 million committed at the time, according to the program director, Harry Pforzheimer, vice president pres-ident of Sohio Petroleum Co., one of the participants. partic-ipants. The initial step, requiring re-quiring $4.5 million, would demonstrate Par-aho's Par-aho's internal combustion process in an 8-12 foot diameter kiln or retort. This process burns car- bon off the retorted shale i'nd uses some of the hirocarbons in the shale itself to provide heat in the form of a recycle gas for extracting oil and gas from shale. Pilot plant tesu; in a smaller retort would also be conducted con-ducted on a variation of the process using an external ex-ternal heater to supply heat for retorting the shale. The second step would include a full-scale test in the 8-12 foot kiln using the external heater heat-er process and would require re-quire $3 million. Work currently underway under-way at Anvil Points is to get the mining, crushing and supporting equipment "out of mothballs" and into operable condition. Designs of the Paraho retorts to be used in the program are in the final stages of preparation, according ac-cording to John B. Jones, president of Development Engineering, Inc. of Denver, Den-ver, the operator for the project. In addition to Sun, the Webb consortium and Sohio So-hio Petroleum, other participating par-ticipating companies are: The Carter Oil Co., a subsidiary sub-sidiary of Exxon Corp.; The Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co.; Gulf Mineral Resources, Re-sources, a division of Gulf Oil Co.; Kerr - McGee Corp.; Arthur G. McGee & Co.; Mobil Oil Co.; Shell Oil Co.; Southern California Edison Co.; and Standard Oil of Ind. The Paraho process has been in successful commercial use for several sev-eral years in the calcination calcin-ation of limestone. |