| Description |
Western Industries, Inc., is engaged in a project with the ultimate objective of recovering petroleum products from the "heavy oil" or "tar" bearing Navajo sandstone formation which is found at or near the surface on certain properties which they have acquired in Uintah County, Utah. Work on this project has been carried on under the name, White Rocks Oil. As conceived, the project will ultimately encompass a mining or excavating operation, a crushing and screening phase, a diluent-hot water extraction process, and the necessary refining operations to produce an optimum economically marketable product. Marketing of by-products from the cleaned sand is another possible phase. Although occurrences of "tar" sands are not uncommon, there have been relatively few attempts to process the materials on a large scale commercial basis. Thus the White Rocks Oil project may be considered as "pioneering". The purpose of this report is to provide an estimation of the total volume or tonnage of hydrocarbon bearing sandstone in the White Rocks Oil properties, and the total amount of petroleum product contained in that sandstone. Thus the objective is an estimation of the total "oil in place". The economics in the excavation, extraction and marketing will have to be known to establish whether all, or what portion, of this oil in place can be regarded as economically recoverable. |
