Show L i 1 t f a t k kI I P l j 14 a f a t T h 1 c t I 1 t t f J I t I H i k t h t t n 3 k e 04 4 Jt b s 's RUBY BLACK seated chairperson of the Ute Tribe Business Committee was elected as the first woman to ever serve on the American Indian National Bank board of directors Standing next to Ms Black on the left is Charles W. W Swallow president and Andrew W. W Ebona also elected director of the National Notional Bank Tar Tor sands activities told in petroleum magazine As oil becomes harder and harder to find petroleum companies are putting their expertise and money money into the tar sand sands to be exact This is reported in the current edition of Petroleum Today which points out that Canada and some areas of the United States especially Utah have vast amounts amounts' of oil lodged d in deposits of sticky tar sands tar sand deposits says Petroleum Today are estimated to contain more than 30 billion barrels of oil Although Utah's tar sands are the best documented other states have tar sand deposits that have not yet been investigated in in- In Canada more progress has been made There a number of oil companies companies' are investing millions of dollars in efforts to tomine tomine tomine mine the Athabasca tar sands in northern Alberta These sands contain an estimated billion barrels of oil A subsidiary of the Sun Company of Philadelphia has been strip mining the Athabasca tar sands for the past nine years but has been plagued by equipment break break- downs However last year the project finally began making a profit Petroleum Today reports that a new and larger operation is being mounted in the Athabasca tar sands by Syn- Syn crude Canada Ltd which is owned by Imperial Oil Ltd a subsidiary of Exxon Corp Canada Cities Canada Cities Service Ltd Gulf Oil Canada Ltd plus the government of Canada and the provincial governments of oC Alberta and Ontario This project is expected to cost 24 billion and is to be completed during the middle of next year The daily production goal is barrels of synthetic oil Strip mining will also be used in this case and for this purpose has ordered huge draglines Petroleum Today describes them The four draglines being built buill for are monster machines completely assembled on site from parts made in Marion Ohio and Pocatello Idaho and moved up to Edmonton on railroad cars The bucket on each holds just about the capacity of oC two Greyhound buses The boom on an each is feet more long-more than the length of a football field When the electrically- electrically powered draglines are assembled they will stand on feet and can walk in a way similar to the way a person on crutches moves The feet are planted down and then the main body of the swings forward A power plant that could provide half the electricity for a city the size of Edmonton pop is being built for Sync rudes rude's us use The four draglines together are expected to mine annually more material than any other mine in existence To produce barrels of oil per day will take a tremendous quantity of tar sands-an sands estimated 92 million tons will run through the the plant each year The tar sands will move onto one of tour four conveyer belts six feet wide-and wide from there into the extraction plant where the 1 bitumen as the oil is called is removed Once cleaned of its oil the sands will be returned to the land and eventually covered with trees again Not all of the Athabasca tar sands will be strip mined Ninety percent of the sands lie too deep for the draglines so an anin anin anin in situ method is being developed Petroleum Today says this about the in situ method One great advantage of the thein thein thein in situ method is its neatness Unlike surface mining techniques that require moving great amounts of earth above aboveground aboveground aboveground ground the in situ method disturbs the environment minimally because most of the action takes lakes place un There wells are drilled then set on fire or injected injected injected in in- with steam to he heat t up the bi bitumen in the tar sands enough to allow it to be produced through conventional oil wells wels This is the method which is to tobe tobe tobe be used on U US U.S. S tar sands w which lie too deep for surface mining according to Petroleum T Today day AN IN SITU project is being fin financed near Vernal by the theUS US U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration ERDA on Oil land owned by the Standard Oil on Co Ohio Twenty three wells are being drilled and later this year the wells will be ignited Hopefully says Petroleum Today the research will provide information that will eventually lead to commercial production of oil oU from tar sands as an alternate energy source in inthis inthis inthis this country |