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Show 3 Ik noi) eft 5(25 ft ftesft pErosass on ioirgieir S(S(il Tne Geokinetics Inc. Minerals Exploration Ex-ploration and Development of Concord, California oil shale development 60 miles south of Vernal is called a low front end cost project. Anyone w ho has visited the remote oil shale development site of Geokinetics will readily agree that there is nothing fancy at this operation. Everything is done on a relatively small scale and it has started from scratch. To hear Mitchell A. "Mike" Lekas explain the struggle of his operations in 1975 when the first retort produced 36 barrels of shale oil and there was nothing around to put the oil in, makes a real success story of a small operation making good. Geokinetics has been the first to produce a shale oil for the commercial market. When the shale oil comes to the surface it is about half water. The water is separated and evaporated in a settling set-tling pond and the oil is then shipped to Roosevelt for refining. Currently Geokinetics has been producing about 32 barrels per day on a tract. By increasing this production to 200 barrels per day per tract and then increasing the number of tracts production of 2,000 and 20,000 barrels per day can be realized, stated Jim Lekas, plant manager and son of Mike. Geokinetics has state oil shale leases in the Book Cliff area, about 60 miles south of Vernal. The oil shale bed is approximately 30 feet thick and has an average grade of about 23 gallons per ton. The beds strike in an east-west direction and dip to the north at about 120 feet per mile. Overburden over the shale ranges from zero to 150 feet. The process, designed specifically for this area where the oil shale beds are relatively thin and close to the surface, is called LOFRECO, said Lekas. Geokinetics is a very small company and therefore the acronym for "Low Front End Cost" is the LOFRECO process. In the LOFRECO process, a pattern of blastholes is drilled from the surface, (Continued on Page 16) 1 ' - - t . ,..., . I'. y-V. , . 5 5 . ' v- j ' , - , i " , - . I r i t - . - - . 1 - , x i N i :--i t.- - v-. i j " i I J--" - , I v .-r : f ,.-v ) i1 r . f-v il .A : r-i- fr '' "'- , ' ; ' ' '. '-f- .'VW.-rf t . J- h '-.' ' .-".rt; . , c , . . , - '" vr-V'.-. -. . . ' . .... -e. ''.-.' PLANT OPERATOR Jim Lekas is filling a bucket with shale oil at the Geokinetics operation. The small pump jack lifts the oil from the drainage area where the retorted oil gravitates to after being be-ing burned. The oil here is the first to be produced in Utah from shale. i;r,-'.,r- Brv'' OIL SHALE Environmental Advisory Panel members inspect oil shale outcropping at the Geokinetics oil shale .development area about 60 miles south of Vernal. The group toured the area Thursday of last week as part of their quarterly meeting held in Vernal. The group also visited the federal prototype oil leases U-a and U-b. 1 -r s . If RETORT DRAWING of plan and section views of Geokinetics horizontal in situ retorting process. Air is forced into the retort through injection holes at left and the oil and gas come to the surface through exhaust holes to the right. The fire front moves towards the exhaust holes. Geokinetics - - (Continued from Page 1) through the overburden and fired, using a carefully planned blast system, explained Lekas. The blast results in a well fragmented mass of oil shale with a high permeability. The void space in the fragmented zone comes from lifting the overburden and producing a small uplight of the surface. The fragmented zone constitutes an in situ retort. The bottom of the retort is sloped to provide drainage for the oil to a sump where it is lifted by a number of oil production wells. Air injection holes are drilled at one end of the retort and off gas holes are drilled at the other end. The oil shale is ignited at the air injection wells, and air is injected to establish and maintain a burning front that occupies the full thickness of the fragmented zone. The front is moved in a horizontal direction through the fractured shale towards the off gas -T" I vvi. n i - - I- r--LjSS. GEOKINETICS PRESIDENT Mike Lekas is shown filling a bucket with oil shale fluid pumped directly from an underground retort. f : v ...V::VV W " tfC "J it s sl fS vi v it t ,1 : - v 6 , - " ... - -'v '"-xsttotait STORAGE TANKS at the Geokinetics oil shale operation separated the water from the oil and holds the oil for shipment to the Plateau refinery in Roosevelt. The three tank wells at the far end of the retort. The burning front heats the oil shale ahead of the front, drivingvout the shale oil, which drains to the bottom of the retort where it flows along the sloping bottom to the oil production wells. As the burn front moves from the air-in to the air-out air-out wells, it burns the residual coke in the retorted shale as fuel. The combustion com-bustion gases are recovered at the. air-out air-out wells. This gas is combustible and could be used for power generation. Progress of the burn front is monitored by thermocouples set in thermocouple wells. The Geokinetics management encourages en-courages its workers to live at home. Home is called Kamp Kerogen. It is a community with a population of 50 persons, 25 workers. Trailers are provided rent-free to encourage workers to bring their families to the camp rather than commuting the long distance. The employees work 10 days and take four off. One of the greater needs at the present time is a surfaced road to the site. Uintah County added another two or three miles of paving this fall but there is still 30 miles of dirt road to travel to the area. The large pipes in the background are takinc the exhaust gases from the in-situ retortine cess. 8prtl group holds 400 barrels each and the tan! " under construction on the left will have a ,' capacity of 3,000 barrels. j A, |