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Show New Source Of Gasoline Now Being Tested While Utghns are basking in the encouraging news that we have commercial oil producing wells, celebrating "Oil Progress Day" and expecting momentarily to hear news of new ,oil wells, it is interesting inter-esting to note the developments and experiments taking place in the shale oil field which involves large sections of Utah. In an article art-icle prepared by one of their staff j correspondents and published in the "Wall Street Journal" the situation sit-uation is reported as follows: "Some day in the future you may be driving along with what was once part of a Colorado, Utah or Wyoming mountainside in the gas tank of your car. Desperation measures which the oil industry may have to use to meet the nation's increasing demand de-mand for gasoline and fue! cil' especially in the event of another war, are getting a tryout right now in the Rockies. High on a steep cliff, called Anvil Points, overlooking the Colorado Col-orado River Valley, the Bureau of Mines is mining and crushing thousands thou-sands of tons of grey shale and then extracting crude oil from it. Soon a new refinery with rated capacity to handle 200 barrels of crude daily 'wil go "on steam", breaking down gasoline, kerosene, j fuel oil and other fractions from the dark gummy oil." The world's major oil shale reserves re-serves are located on what is known as the "Wasatch Front." Again quoting the Wall Street Journal : "Colorado's oil shale reserves are the largest and richest in the world, covering more than 1000 square miles in beds 500 feet thick. The yield ranging from 18 to 70 gallons of oil to the ton of shale, indicates a potential of from 200 billion to 300 billion gallons from this state alone. In Utah, guessed-at-reserves are from 25 billion to 43 billion gallons, while Wyoming is believed to have from one to ' three billion gallons hidden in her mountains. Oil shale is a light-grey to dark brown marlstone. It is not really impregnated with oil but contains an organic material called "kero-gen" "kero-gen" which is the remains of mav-erated mav-erated plant life, deposited in lake beds in the geologic past. The oil from the shale is a black viscous liquid with a lot of ornery characteristics, as Boyd Guthrie, Bureau of Mines superintendent at Rifle puts it, "It is not as good as the best crude we have nor as poor as the worst. It will require a different diff-erent refining treatment." Comparing shale oil with a typical typ-ical mid-continerit petroleum from i around Oklahoma City, the shale oil has almost 2 per cent nitrogen j to none in Oklahoma crude; its sulphur content is more than five times as high as the natural petroleum. pet-roleum. These are the bothersome differences. Also th synthetic has a lot more tars and resins than the average crude." More Rig Figures on I "tah Industry. I taxes and miscellaneous; S16.500.-l 000 for payrolls. The present av- I erage weekly take home pay for all Utah Copper employees is $72.42 I which compares with the average weekly take home pay for all workers in the state of J49.31 Utah Deportment of Employment Security for the second quarter of 1918.) Approximately S14.163.000 will be spent in this area by the Utah Copper Division of the Kennecott Copper Corporation during the coming twelve months. This will be the highest expenditure in the company's history. S12.664.000 will be spent for material and supplies: S11.99S.000. for freight, smelting, |