BOARD02623

• Board Meeting Date: 8/1/1974
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

in the Colorado River a decision was made by the oil companies to
eliminate return flows. This obviously increased the water require-
ments. For that reason the estimates made by the staff of the board
are considerably higher than any other estimates made either by the
federal government or by private consultants. All the estimates are I
based on a one million barrel per day production. Our estimate
today is that a one million barrel per day production will require
about 250,000 acre-feet of water annually, which is over 100,000 feet
higher than our 1959 estimates.

There is one other parameter that hasn't been mentioned in connection
with the water use and which could account for a large amount of
water. That is the water required to produce electrical energy to
serve the oil shale industry. We actually have three factors in
estimating the water requirements of the oil shale industry. One,
is the direct consumption by the industry itself. The second is the
consumption by the associated population growth. The third is the
consumption attributable to the production of electrical energy to
serve the oil shale industry. The industry will require great amounts
of electrical energy. So the problem really falls into three dif-
ferent categories. This is the reason we have constantly increased
our figures to come up with a quarter of a million acre-feet of
water annually for a million barrel per day industry.

Mr. Kilburn: I read your figures, Mr. Sparks. I was trying to see
if I could argue with them earlier and I recomputed our use which
would be 7,500 acre-feet per year for 50,000 barrels per day.
Multiplying that by 20, which is a conunon practice to get a million
barrel a day industry, we arrive at 150,000 acre-feet. But that does
not include the new population which would up it to 175,000 acre-
feet. The electric thing I don't have any figures on, but we are
getting up towards your figure, I am afraid.

Mr. Stapleton: Can somebody tell us more about the water use for
electrical power? I am not knowledgeable at all about that.

Mr. Fetcher: Ben, could I ask a question that would lead right into
that?

Mr. Stapleton: All right, fine.

Mr. Fetcher: What is the primary source of thermal energy for your
process ?

Mr. Kilburn: Well, initially we would import natural gas to get the
process going; then we would use our own fuel. So it would be
completely internal energy for crushing the rock using our own fuels
to obtain the heat eventually. We would take a fraction of the
yield and turn it back into the plant. I donlt have the figures for
the fuel required at the various stages, but it would not be a
terrific amount. We would not be importing any fuel after the.first
initial start-up. Obviously, using our own fuel is cheaper than

I

-11-