Word: marl
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Actually, "shale oil" is neither shale nor oil. The rock is marl, a variety of limestone laced with a solid fossil fuel called kerogen. The kerogen was deposited 40 million years ago in the form of millions of tons of vegetable matter that collected on the bottom of a mammoth freshwater lake that then covered Utah, Wyoming and Colorado. But these lake-bed accumulations were never subjected to temperatures as high as 300° F and to extreme pressures that in time created underground deposits of readily usable liquid oil and natural gas. Now man must finish nature...
...alcohol from corn mash. After the shale is mined, the rock is crushed. Union Oil then moves shale chunks through a towering surface retort, where hot gases heat it to release the kerogen. Colony uses a different process: it cooks finely ground shale in giant drums by mixing the marl with superheated, marble-size ceramic balls that distribute the temperature evenly and vaporize the kerogen. The balls are then separated from the spent shale by a screen, reheated and used again...
...Water, a precious resource in the tri-state region, is one of their greatest concerns. Conservationists claim that shale extraction could use from one to five barrels of water for each barrel of oil, but company officials maintain much less would be required. Critics also argue that the underground marl-cooking process could release salts, and perhaps even arsenic, into the region's ground water. Shale opponents protest finally that the surface-retorting process leaves piles of rubble and dust behind that would ruin the pristine Rocky Mountain valleys. A 400,000-bbl.-a-day industry would require...
Bernd Ehm Marl, West Germany
...cocky Elobin, J.B. proves to be a concerned and even therapeutic big brother. When Toback's wife, the granddaughter of an English duke, leaves him, Brown is helpful though not overly sympathetic. It didn't take much to see that Toback had been confused about which Marl-Dorough country he really wanted to come home...