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<br />I <br /> <br />I <br /> <br />present site and so the site has been moved to the top of the plateau <br />where the diffusion characteristics are much better. <br /> <br />The nature of the plateau can be seen here clearly and the bulk of <br />the Piceance Basin then is really this plateau which slopes off to <br />the left. There is more than a hundred feet of shale there. I am <br />not sure, five hundred, a thousand feet, but there is only a hundred <br />feet of good stuff. <br /> <br />(slide) Now looking north across the Piceance you get this view. <br />And in the bottom of the picture as you can see, the retorts. That <br />is a 300-foot retort to give you an idea of the scale here. This <br />looks at the Colony property and on beyond that into the rest of the <br />Piceance Basin. <br /> <br />(slide) Here is the natural terrain and the richest oil shale near <br />the top of the picture. The darker solid material is the mahagony <br />zone and that is where the 30 plus gallons of oil per ton of shale <br />exists and that is what will be taken. It is quite a uniform layer <br />that will be utilized there. <br /> <br />(slide) Our pilot mine was operated in conjunction with our semi- <br />works operation for three years. This is the entrance to that mine. <br />A commercial facility would have six such entrances so that the mine <br />would have a minimal impact on the surface of the land. <br /> <br />(slide) Here is another picture of the drill operation. It drills <br />into the rock several feet. Explosives are placed and then the whole <br />area is blasted to remove the rock in a very coarse stage. <br /> <br />(slide) The blasted material then is loaded by this front-end loader <br />into a large 70 to a 100 ton truck. It is pulled out of the mine <br />and dumped in this pilot plant for further crushing. <br /> <br />(slide) Here is the crusher system in operation at the semi-works <br />facilities and then the crushed material is sent into the retort where <br />it is retorted to get out the organic material. <br /> <br />(slide) Now that retort would be scaled up about fifty times. I <br />shouldn't say that. The commercial operation will process fifty <br />times as much ore. It will scale each one of those up about ten or <br />eleven times. <br /> <br />(slide) Here is the diagram of the TaSCa II Process. I won't go into <br />it in detail, except to say that the shale is mixed with hot ceramic <br />balls. It is rotated and this decomposes the rocks and the material <br />is released as a vapor and then the processed shale is strained at <br />the bottom. <br /> <br />(slide) I think you can read most of this data concerning water use. <br />Let me just stop for a couple of minutes to look that over with you. <br /> <br />-4- <br />