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Show SutJGommiiiGG ! clears gootliormal said Marriott. He noted that the Department Depart-ment of Energy estimates geothermal energy could produce the equivalent of 190 million barrels of oil a year, or 700,000 barrels a day by 1990. That's about 8-12 of today's crude oil production. We may even quadruple that by the year 2000. Geothermal energy could conceivably generate as much as 15 of our electrical elec-trical needs in this country." Marriott said the U.S. Geological Survey has identified iden-tified over 2.1 million acres of federal land as KGRA with commercial geothermal potential, including Roosevelt Roose-velt Springs near Milford. The House Mines and M in -ing Subcommittee unanimously unani-mously approved a bill to promote geothe'rmal energy. Congressman Dan Marriott Mar-riott (R-Utah), a member of the Committee, said the bill makes the leasing process for geothermal areas clearer clear-er and rewards companies who aggressively develop the resource. Marriott said HR 5187 is a followup to a bill approved by the full House in September which more than doubles the amount of public land acreage acre-age available to individual lessees under the Geothermal Geo-thermal Act of 1970. That bill, cosponsored by Marriott, Mar-riott, raised the limit to 51,200 acres from 20,480 acres. The bill exempts from that limitation a lessee's holdings hold-ings that are contiguous to a commercially viable operation. This is basically a reward for companies who develop workable geothermal geother-mal projects. In addition the bill prohibits pro-hibits the Secretary of Interior Inter-ior from declaring an area discovered by a company a "Known Geothermal Resource Re-source Area" (KGRA) and allowing competitive leasing. leas-ing. "If Company A discovers dis-covers a new geothermal area, it should have the first opportunity to obtain a lease on a noncompetitive bid basis ba-sis before Companies B and C get Involved. This would insure that the incentive to discovering new geothermal resources is maintained," |