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Show Paraho loses first round, will make second bid Paraho Development Co. is down but not out. The Grand Junction, Colo., company is going to ask the Synthetic Fuel Copr. again for loan and price guarantees for its oil shale project, an officer said Monday. And it is going to ask the SFC to say why it discarded Paraho from its first-round first-round choices for federal backing. On Friday the SFC named five projects it would negotiate with for development of alternate synthetic energy forms. Paraho, which proposes an oil shale project 40 miles southeast of Vernal, was the only oil shale venture and the only Utah project to seek aid. Paraho had asked for a 75 percent loan guarantee on $2.5 billion it expected ex-pected to spend on a mine and 42,320-barrel-a-day shale oil plant in the Uintah Basin. It also asked for $200 million in back up for price supports on its production. "It was a minor setback," said Harry Pforzheimer, vice president of corporate cor-porate and public affairs. "When you've got 100 people (Paraho 's current employee force) believing they've got the best oil shale technology in the world, you are not going to stop the momentum." Mr. Pforzheimer said companies that didn't make it through the first round of selections have until May 31 to resubmit their proposals. By that time, he said, Paraho hopes to have forced the SFC to say what Paraho's failures, if any , were. Up until Friday's rejection, he said, Paraho had no reason to believe in fact, had no adverse comment from SFC that its proposal had any deficiencies. There have been some negative comments about the project, however, most notably those contained in a report prepared by Friends of the Earth in Denver and issued by the Enrionmental Policy Institute March 16 in Washington, D C. The report attacked Paraho and 10 other synfuel projects. It said Paraho "lacks adequate shale resources to last more than one-third of its projected life," and also claimed Paraho and its sole equite partner "do not have adequate resources to finance even the unguaranteed portion of the i i i ... .i ... . GRAND OPENING was held Monday for Shaulingo Spa and dance studio. Owners and managers are Shauna Smuin and Linda Lin-da Montgomery. project." Beyond May 31, there are two additional ad-ditional rounds for corporations to polish and resubmit their proposals before decision time in 1984. And there is no guarantee that the five projects selected for negotiations last Friday will not be discarded by SFC, Mr. Pforzheimer sid. Paraho has already put $45 million into research and development and base-line environmental studies. It will, of course, continue to consider private finance or step-by-step development if i it can't get the federal guarantees. "But that front -end risk is so high it is almost essential you have some kind of guarantee backed by the full faith and credit of the government." |
