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Show u II EKIXBCSS? - VOL. 1 'W-tZ-. fc. J . jp CJiXiXaraORJ) NO. 48 FEBRUARY 9f 1970 25 Cents per Copy Interior eyes changes in federal oil shale policy A change in federal encompassing part of Utah, oil-sha- le policy is reportedly under consideration by the U.S. Colorado and Wyoming. Utah has the largest percentage of Department of the Interior. shale under state lands. Usually reliable Washington About 150,000 acres of state sources indicate a proposal land is under lease at 50 cents an hasn't yet reached Secretary of acre which doubles to $1 after Interior Walter Hickel, but an 10 years says Charles R. important announcement is Hansen, director, State Division predicted within a few weeks. of Lands. While the state now Indication that something is receives only $75,000 a year in in the works came Tuesday revenue, royalties from potential when Reps. John S. Wold, development could fund our and Sherman P. Lloyd, school system, Mr. Hansen held a joint press says. conference to discuss new About half the state land is initiatives which we hope will be leased by Western Oil Shale taken by the Department of Corp. Two-thirof the state Interior with respect to oil shale acreage is held by Western, Shell research and development. 011 Co:, Pan American Oil and An estimated two trillion Atlantic-Richfiel- d Oil, Mr. barrels of oil is contained in Hansen said. shale deposits in a triangle When former Interior R-Wy-o., h, ds Secretary Stewart Udall called for bids on federal lands in Colorado, only one company submitted an offer. It is expected that a future bid offering might include Utah and Wyoming federal land as well. Anything the federal government do&to stimulate oil shale production is going to benefit Utah,, says Howard RitzmanV petroleum geologist, Utah,Geological Survey.' - f Reps. Wold aniP'lloyd wrote, earlier to more than 100 energy companies to obtain a sampling of their interest in oil-sha- le development. About companies 75 said they were interested in any feasible offer which W9uld encourage research (Continued on Page 6) Uranium probes at record high WASHINGTON government The has reported that the exploration for uranium atomic the of element key New process found for recovery of gold WASHINGTON way to recover Promising tests of a low-cogold from ores too low in grade to be processed conventionally have been reported by the Department of the Interiors Bureau of Mines. The method involves piling the ore in heaps and leaching it with a solution that extracts gold, which is then recovered from the leach liquor. In Nevada, where significant gold discoveries have been made in recent years, the Bureau estimates that a million ounces of gold could be leached from material found in deposits that are either too small, or too low in grade, to justify the costs of conventional st treatment. Conventional ore processing, by contrast to the low cost and simplicity of heap leaching, entails high capital expenditures for the construction and operation of relatively complex mills. Furthermore, these plants cannot, as a rule, accept ore containing less than .06 ounces of gold per ton. Bureau experimenters conducted laboratory leaching tests on materials containing as little as .02 ounces per ton, g yielding gold at recovery rates between 67 and 95 per cent. These y field test on 500 tons of encouraging results led to a waste material from a Nevada surface gold mine. About 53 per cent of the gold had been recovered from the heap when the test was terminated, and gold was still being extracted at a measurable rate. Hie company considered these results promising and is now conducting two more field tests. The leach liquor contains cyanide, a compound used to extract gold from ore in conventional mills, Impervious bases of asphalt or plastic underlie the ore heaps in the field tests, collecting the leach liquor and also preventing it from contaminating the environment. Bureau of Mines Technical Progress Report 20, Recovering Gold from Stripping Waste and Ore by PErcolation Cyanide Leaching, is by George M. Potter of the Bureaus Salt Lake City Metallurgy Research Center. Single copies can be obtained at no charge from the Publications Distribution Section, Bureau of Mines, 4800 Forbes Ave., gold-bearin- 35-da- gold-bearin- g Pittsburgh, Pa. 15213. energy program once more reached new record high levels during 1969, resulting in the largest annual increase in uranium ore reserves since 1957. Reporting this, the .Atomic Energy Commission said the ore reserve increases were especially notable in Wyoming, Texas and New Mexico. The AEC singled out Wyoming for special mention, declaring the year marked a large reserve increase in the Powder River basin of Wyoming which, the commission said, appears capable of developing into a major uranium district. The state as a whole already ranks high in the uranium reserve department, The Powder River deposit referred to oi those is one major throughout the states where uranium-producin- g uranium is recoverable at $8 a pound, the most attractive rate. The AEC, in its annual report to Congress, also said it expects the increased exploration will also significantly increase the national reserves of uranium recoverable at $10 a pound principally in Wyoming, New Snow halts work on property KELLOGG, Idaho All work Princeton-Magn- a and Idaho- - Montana areas has been halted for the rest of the winter because of snow conditions, James C. Young and Kay Critchlow, managing directors of Magna Mining Co. of Kellogg, Idaho, reported following a visit on the to the property. They said work included a crosscut that was being driven from the 180-folevel of the shaft the to intersect Magna ot downward projection of the Magna No. 1 vein, which contains silver-copper-lead-zi- nc values. It was intersected 203 feet from the portal of the Magna tunnel. Following inspection of the work from the Magna shaft, Young and Critchlow conferred with officials of the Bunker Hill Co. of Kellogg. Bunker Hill is in charge of the work. The Magna directors s&id it was agreed that more flexability could be achieved in exploring the Princetion-Magn- a property, and the Magna structures in particular, by diamond drilling from the surface. Until recently, a Bunker TE11 geological crew was soil sampling and mapping geology to the east of the Magna tunnel. Work was completed last week on the property and plans are . now being formulated for work in the spring, they concluded. Bill aims at licensing geologists A bill that would regulate geologists in the way that professional professional same engineers are regulated is pending in the current Idaho legislative session. Rolland R. Reid, dean of the College of Mines at the University of Idaho, said last week that his law, patterned on a national mode geological licensing law to insure reciprocity is a sound law. Suffice to say that this law will be a safeguard to the public welfare and that it has the support of most of the professional geologists in the state, he wrote in to both A. J. Teske, the Idaho Mining and Esldl Anderson, a letter sent secretary of Association, president of the Northwest Mining Association. He also sought, through the letter, their support of the bill if they thought it was desirable. |