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Show State Engineer Calls Conoco Well Exciting Calling Conoco' s exploratory well results from the Rees Canyon Can-yon site "exciting and gratifying," State Geologist Lee Allison characterized char-acterized the findings as a "significant scientific discovewry for Utah, with important ex-onomic ex-onomic implications." "For nearly a decade, the Utah Geological Survey (UGS) has been predicting that there were hydrowcarbon deposits at a far deeper level in that region that anyonw has ever tried to reach," Allison added. "The Conoco results re-sults validate that theory. Far I from being a dry hold, Conoco's well is more a Christmas present for the schoolchildren of Utah because be-cause it increases the value of resources re-sources in the monument." " In our initial assessment of the monument's commodities, which I emphasize was very conservative con-servative and very preliminary while remaining scientifically accurate ac-curate and technically valid, we indicated there could be millions of dollars worth of oil recoverable from School and Institutional Trust Lands within the monument. Conoco's discovery can only push the initial estimation up. That means the school trust land, which President Clinton has already al-ready agreed to trade out for equal value elsewhere, has to be worth more." Since 1989, the UGS has maintained that oil resources could be trapped in rocks older than ever before produced in Utah. Since then, only three (See CONOCO on Page 4-B) State Engineer Calls Conoco Well Exciting From Front Page other wells have reached as deep in the geologic record as the Conoco well, about 12,000 feet down into rock formations of Pre-cambrian Pre-cambrian age. Those wells did not find evidence of petroleum. Conoco' s well revealed substantial substan-tial deposits of gas in two separate sepa-rate deep formations, the Muav and the Tapeats, but the deposits were not extractable. This is the first evidence of hydrocarbon deposits de-posits has been found at such levels. lev-els. "It is always gratifying to have our science validated," Allison said. "We first proposed the drilling drill-ing into the Precambrian layer nearly 10 year ago, and Conoco and a couple of other oil companies compa-nies acquired mulitiple leases in the region on the basis of our theory. the-ory. Politics and commercial viability vi-ability aside, this is a significant find because it confirms the Pre-cambrian-Cambrian province as a new exploration 'play', or 'target." The UG$'s mission is to make Utah richer and safer by generating, generat-ing, interpreting, preserving, and distributing geological, paleon-tological, paleon-tological, archaeological, and pa-leoecological pa-leoecological information. |