Evening star., 1950-09-04
By Thomas R. Henry
Stoy Stof Correspondent

CHICAGO, Sept. 4-The United
States has a potential oil reserve
of more than 300 billion barrels
This is three or four times
greater than all the country's S
other natural petroleum resources
combined, according to a report
to the American Chemical Society
here today by Bureau of Mines
chemists.
This reserve is the Green River
shale which covers about 10000
square miles in Wyoming, Utah
and Colorado. Curiously enough,
according to the report of DR.. 1.
C. Frost and his associates of the
Bureau of Mines station at Lar
annie, Wyo., this shale contains
no oil as such.
It is somewhere in the midst
of the milleniums-long process OF
oil creation, but this can be tele-
scoped by chemists when the need
arises with the accelerating de-
pletion of natural petroleum.
Made Chemical Study.
The report was on chemical
study of the rock. 1t is sedimen-
tary rock laid down millions OF
years ago on the floor of a shall
low sea. This sea swarmed with
living things and their bodies
were mixed with the minerals
swept down from the land to
form the bottom ooze which even
tually hardened to form the shale.
1t is from the myriads of myri-
ads of dead sea creatures that oil
finally is formed. The Bureau of
Mines chemists reported that
when sufficient heat is applied, oil
and natural gas are produced.
| The costs would be partly Offset
by the minerals mixed with the
oil-producing material. They have
found recoverable amounts of sill
lea, iron, aluminium, calcium
magnesium. sulfur, sodium and
potassium. There are traces OF
many other elements, ranging
from bare traces to a few hun
dredths Of one per cent. These
probably could not be economi-
cally recovered.
A hitherto waste product of
paper manufacture may become
the basic substance of America S
synthetic rubber in another emer-
gency, it was reported to the So
ciety by DR.. K. A. Kobe of the
University of Texas.
In the past an essential of rub
ber making has been styrene, OBJ
tained from petroleum. In the
most utilitarian type of synthetic
rubber this is mixed with buta-
diene, another petroleum product.
The latter is abundant, the former
scarce. The styrene supply has
always been somewhat of bottle
neck.
The waste by-product of the
paper mills is a material very SINH
lar to styrene, known as para
cymene. Hitherto it has been
considered useless and no effort
has been made to recover it.
Agriculture Department special
lists have estimated that the mills
of the United States and Canada
produce about a million gallons
of the material each year. This
is in excess of possible styrene
production.
1t may be possible, DR.. Kobe
said, to produce a superior type
OF rubber with para-cymene.
New Fertilization for Bread.
Wartime bread made of white
flour was fortified with vitamins
to make up for what was lost
from the grain in the milling
process. This now may be ex-
tended to include fortification
with some Of the amino acids, the
basic substances from which the
body builds up the proteins which
are the building bricks of muscle,
gland and brain.
Experiments in feeding rats
bread fortified with lysine-one
of these amino acids. was reported
to the Society today by DR.. Hans
R. Rosenberg OF the Dupont Co.
The animals not only grew faster
than those fed on the same kind