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Show Oil Shortage May Bring Shale In Your Gas Tank While Utahns are basking in the encouraging news that we have commercial oil producing wells, celebrating "Oil Progress Day" and expecting momentarily momentar-ily to hear news of new oil wells, it is interesting to note the developments de-velopments and experiments taking place in the shale oil field, which involves large sections sec-tions of Utah. In an article prepared pre-pared by one of their staff correspondents cor-respondents and published in the "Wall Street Journal" the situation 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 mountain-side in the gas tank of your car. Desperation measures which the oil industry may have to use to meet the nation's increasing in-creasing demands for gasoline and fuel oil, 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 River Valley, the Bureau Bu-reau of Mines is mining and crushing thousands 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 will go "on steam", breaking break-ing down gasoline, kerosene, fuel oil and other "fractions" from the dark gummy oil." The world's major oil shale reserves 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 1,000 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 Wy-oming is believed to have from one to three billion gallons hidden hid-den in her mountains. Oil shale is a light-gray to dark-brown marlstone. It is not really impregnated with oil but contains an organic material ma-terial called "kerogen" which is the remains of maverated 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 refining treatment." Comparing shale oil with a typical mid-continent petroleum petrol-eum from around Oklahoma City, the shale oil has almost 2 nitrogen to none in Oklahoma Okla-homa crude; its sulphur content con-tent is more than five times as high as the natural petroleum These are the bothersome differences. dif-ferences. Also the synthetic has a lot more tars and resins than the average crude." More Big Figures On Utah Industry Approximately $44,163,000 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 high-est expenditure in the company's compa-ny's history. $12,664,000 will be spent for material and supplies; $14,998,0000 for freight, smelting, smelt-ing, taxes and miscellaneous; $16,500,000 for payrolls. . The present average weekly take home pay for all Utah . Copper Division employees is $72.42 (which compares with the average av-erage weekly take home pay for all workers in the state of $49.31 Utah Department of Employment Security for the second quarter of 1948). |