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Show lc Pwr Lint : I Compressor Bldtf i r i 1 1 ' Y Tank Farm . I ProdiKtion Spar. Tonk-I Cj Q) I v ' J ij fCX. if'Pump Houi. I L Boiler Production LP Gat . VrxU I -O lf 1 ' fl "h.O Soft.n.r Main lTC SiS Hord H.O OHi(. d 1s no n o-o t IVn son h,o CojJtid9 jj ;(Se ! f ! '(JxOijfuol Tonk I I. U. .Tiki I 18.5X10' BuHr j 'JSt.am G.n 4 Production J " 'f In.ulot.d i Slom 'fSW (0 ProductionW.il Troc. H.at.d ( NJt t'88 ' BlnjKlionW.il J s Lp, AMonilorW.il 50 100 f F..t ' 3P2 3T4 ! :ah ! : 3i it DIAGRAM OF STRUCTURES at the Asphalt Ridge tar sand field experiment site. The shad- Steam infection test at Asphalt last Ridge tar sands successful t U.S. Department of Energy researchers have successfully completed com-pleted their first attempt to use steam to free thick oil trapped in an underground un-derground tar sand deposit at Asphalt Ridge, Uintah County, according to spokesman Robert C. Porter. Porter pointed out that researchers have spent five months injecting hot, pressurized steam into the 490-foot deep tar sand deposit at the northwest portion of Asphalt Ridge located four miles west of Vernal, north of the Lapoint highway. He said the scientists raised the reservoir's temperature from a normal range of less than 100 degrees Fahrenheit to a maximum of 465 degrees F. "At this temperature, the heavy bitumen in the pores of the tightly packed sand, becomes thin enough to move through the reservoir to nearby production wells," Porter said. Porter added that in commercial operations, the bitumen produced from this process would be upgraded to a ed area is the one-fourth acre test zone estimated to contain about 20,000 barrels of oil ;0 lr r distillate material from which naphtha and fuel oil could be extracted. According to Porter, the experiment produced about 1,000 barrels of bitumen, although actual production quantity was a secondary objective to measuring the behavior of the steam in the reservoir. The researchers worked from the DOE's Energy Technology Center at Laramie, Wyo. Porter said they will now begin a detailed analysis of the information generated by the test. "In particular, they want to compare the results with earlier experiments at an adjacent site in which, instead of injecting steam, part of the oil in the formation was burned and the heat used to think surrounding oil," he noted. Porter observed that by comparing the results from both methods, DOE hopes to gauge which has the best chance to be scaled up to larger demonstrations. He said the experiment was conducted con-ducted on Sohio Natural Resources Co. property. The test zone was abos an feet thick, encompassed roughly.; j quarter of an acre, and was estiii; J to contain about 20,000 barrels of .",(y Porter again emphasized thats's size of the U.S. tar sands resoW between 24 and 36 billion barrels j and Utah is thought to have aboa a percent of the resource. j;j i He said less than 15 percent o 3litl bitumen contained in tar sands cr'Sf mined with today's technology, m n featuring hot water extraction'1'1 surface mining processing, as isl: H done commercially in Canada. f& The in situ process advanced1'111 derground techniques such as l'" tested at Vernal, will be necessi ;fflc the full potential of U.S. tar ; resources is to be developed, P?T observed. :toil i .coper "Should these techniques I successful, and the geology 01., underground reservoirs is favoi from one to three billion barrels could be recovered at Asphalt i from the in situ process," Porter |