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Show Oil Shale Mine Being Developed Don Lambert, a consulting con-sulting mining engineer for Superior Oil Company Com-pany announced last week that invitations to bid on driving the first experimental experi-mental mine deep into the oil shale beds from the White River Valley will be sent out, to prospective contractors in the next two weeks. Lambert has been doing the mining studies for Superior and will be in charge of the project during the driving of the tunnel. Site of the mine w ill be near the confluence of Piceance Creek and the White River, some 20 miles west of Meeker. According to the report, contracts will be let to local firms in the next few weeks for road construction con-struction and portal preparation. pre-paration. Actual work of driving the tunnel is expected ex-pected to be under way by late September or early October. The mine will be the first underground operation opera-tion in the shale beds to be conducted from the north side of the basin. All previous major shale mining work has been conducted on the south rim where the zone outcrops. out-crops. A potential problem accompanying Superior's plans is the extensive overhead aquifer in the leached zone of the oil shale beds. Essentially the goal of the experimental experi-mental mine is to prove that the shale and other minerals can be mined safely and economically. It is anticipated that once this has been proven, the next step would be construction con-struction of surface processing pro-cessing facilities. The pilot mine will also double check the results from core drilling. Lambert Lam-bert said 28 cores have been drilled on the property. pro-perty. He said the cores show the formation at the planned mining depth (1800 feet) is tight with no jointing or fracturing. |