Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 April 1918 — MOUNTAINS OF OIL UNTOUCHED [ARTICLE]

MOUNTAINS OF OIL UNTOUCHED

Mountains of oil! That is not a figure of speech but an actual fact, as recent investigations by the government experts in w’estern Colorado and Utah prove. A sedimentary clay of th© Tertiary age saturated with oil and solidified into shale is tjie substance of which these oil mountains are composed. Mr. Dean E. Winchester of the United States Geological S'urvpy says that in Colorado alone there is sufficient oil-bearing shale to yield about twenty billion barrels of crude oil, from which two billion barrels of gasoline may be extracted, and that in Utah there is probably an equal amount. Here in the Rockies great hills lift their heads heavenward, veritable mountains o> oil. For ages they have stood there unw’orked by man, and it is only within a few months that effort has been made to convert them into beneficial use. Some of the shale yields as much as ninety gallons of oil to the ton. Destructive distillation is the (method of obtaining the oil from the x mined ore, and the fuel used is gas, a by-product of the process. Mr. R. D. George, state geologist of Colorado, says that in the fifteen hundred square miles of territory in northwestern Colorado in which there are commercially workable oil-shale beds there is an oil content of thirty-six billion barrels, or just about ten times as much as has been produced in the United States since the oil industry began in 1859. Even a much more conservative estimate w’ould be sufficient to dispel fears of an immediate oil and gasoline famine. For many years -the shale beds of Scotland have been worked profitably in spite of the fact that the deposits are hundreds of feet beneath the surface and in strata only inches wide. The Colorado shales are on the surface and are several feet in thickness. One of the most important by-products is aimmonia, which will be of great use for enriching farm land. Mr. Winchester has estimated that the Colorado shale will produce about three hundred million tons of this valuable fertilizer.

Mountains of oil! Yes, not only of oil but of gas, naptha, gasoline, lubricating oil, paraffin, ammonia and several other important products.— Youth’s Companion.