Word: marl
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...mainland. On Oct. 30 a team of workers at the face of the French section of the service tunnel that is being bored 131 ft. below the bed of the Channel waited for a thin steel probe, drilled from the British side, to pierce the wall of chalk marl in front of them. The 2-in.-diameter aperture opened by the probe could not be seen at first, but then the British crew sent a blast of compressed air through the hole, blowing out the last crumbs of marl...
...plant, Colony was going to be the most serious attempt ever made in the decades-old dream of wresting energy from northwestern Colorado's rugged Piceance Basin, which contains possibly 1.2 trillion bbl. of oil. The fuel is trapped in a form of limestone that geologists call marl, which is commonly known as shale. Colony's 8,800 acres alone are estimated to contain at least 500 million bbl. of oil, a month-long supply for the entire U.S. at the current levels of consumption. The project's facilities include a huge retort for cooking a compound...
...fuel in the West holds as much promise-so far unfulfilled-as shale oil. The slopes of northwestern Colorado, southwestern Wyoming and northeastern Utah are layered with marl, a limestone in which a fossil fuel called kerogen is embedded. When heated to 900° F, the marl bleeds its kerogen, which
Though research on extracting kerogen from marl began in the 1920s, shale oil went undeveloped because its production cost always exceeded the market price of crude. Promises still outpace production, but during the past few years Occidental Petroleum, Atlantic Richfield and Union Oil have spent millions experimenting with shale-oil extraction in Colorado's Piceance Basin. Occidental Chairman Armand Hammer believes that his company will be able to begin commercial production by 1985, keeping costs below $25 per bbl. Today other companies are digging mines near Grand Junction and Rangely, Colo., and Vernal, Utah. Exxon is the most enthusiastic...
...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...