DENVER & EIO GRANDE WESTERN ROUTE. 



149 



studied, tested, and mapped by Dean E. Winchester, of the United 

 States Geological Siirve}', who describes it below.'*'^ A moderate 

 estimate, made by him. of the quantity of oil that may be obtained 

 from the Green River formation in Colorado alone is 40,000,000,000 

 barrels. 



The oil shale is within view from the railroad for only a short 

 distance in Colorado, near Grand Valley, and is not seen again 

 by the traveler until he reaches Colton, Utah, but the two areas are 



*5 Before petroleum was discovered 

 in Pennsylvania, in 1859, the Mormons 

 distilled it, in an experimental way, 

 from shale of the Green River forma- 

 tion near Juab, Utah, where the ruins 

 of their old still may yet be seen. 

 Experiments in other parts of north- 

 eastern Utah and northwestern Colo- 

 rado have confii'med the results ob- 

 tained at Juab. For many years oil 

 has been distilled from similar shale 

 in Scotland, where large plants have 

 been erected for this purpose, but the 

 supply of crude petroleum in this 

 country has been so great that no one 

 has been willing to invest capital in 

 such an enterprise. The growing de- 

 mand for gasoline, however, has made 

 it impei'ative to seek further supplies 

 of oil, so the United States Geological 

 Survey has been testing the so-called 

 oil shale of the Green River forma- 

 tion to find how many gallons of oil 

 it will yield per ton and mapping its 

 geographic distribution so as to be 

 able to make some estimate of the 

 total quantity of oil that may be 

 obtained from it. A conservative cal- 

 culation of the oil content of the shale 

 in Colorado shows that it will yield 

 at least 40,000.000,000 barrels of crude 

 oil. The yield of gasoline would be 

 one-tenth as much, and with a little 

 added expense 300,000,000 tons of am- 

 monium sulphate would be obtained 

 as a by-product. The sulphate is an 

 excellent fertilizer and would be 

 highly valuable to the farmers in this 

 and adjacent regions. 



The Gi-een River formation, which 

 is so well exposed in the great white 

 cliffs at Grand Valley, consists pre- 

 dominantly of shale, but in places it 

 80697°— 22 11 



includes beds of sandstone, oolite, and 

 conglomerate. The general 'white color 

 of the weathered outcrops is varied 

 near the top of the big cliffs by hard 

 bluish beds, which when freshly 

 broken are dark brown or black and 

 give off an odor of petroleum. This 

 hard, dark shale is destined to become 

 a valuable source of crude oil and its 

 refined products, such as gasoline and 

 kerosene, as well as of nitrogen com- 

 pounds. Good oil shale is tough and 

 remarkably flexible. Thin splinters 

 will bum and give off an asphaltic 

 odor when ignited with a match. Oil 

 shale contains a vast amount of or- 

 ganic matter, largely vegetal, which 

 appears to be the source of the crude 

 oil that may be produced from it by 

 destructive distillation. 



The average oil shale mined in 

 Scotland will yield about 2^ gallons 

 of crude oil to the ton, but there is an 

 abundance of shale in Colorado and 

 Utah that will yield a barrel (42 gal- 

 lons) to the ton. The crude oil, when 

 refined by ordinary processes, will 

 yield from 10 to 15 per cent of gaso- 

 line. 



Experiments are now in progress 

 both in the laboratories of the United 

 States Bureau of Mines and in many 

 private establishments to devise a 

 method of retort treatment that will 

 most successfully produce a distillate 

 that can readily be refined into stand- 

 ard products at a profit. Such a 

 method will no doubt be found, and 

 this region in northwestern Colorado 

 will probably be the scene of a great 

 industry in the production of artificial 

 petroleum by the distillation of these 

 deposits of oil shale 



