Wyoming Business Report
April 29, 2009, Staff

BOSTON — General Synfuels International (GSI) announced that it has secured an exploration agreement for lands in Wyoming and rights to a separate oil shale resource in Colorado.

The agreements will allow the company to test and develop patented technology to recover hydrocarbons from oil shale, oil sands and heavy oil. According to a company release, the technology prioritizes environmental sensitivity.

Oil shale development has stalled due to the high costs – both monetarily and environmentally – of extraction, which so far has required great amounts of heat, water or both and has not proved to be cost effective. The company claims to have developed a patented, environmentally-friendly, energy self-sustainable and economically-viable process to recover oil and gas products from oil shale, oil sands and heavy oil.

The exploration agreement is with a subsidiary of Anadarko Petroleum Co., and covers approximately 160 acres near Rock Springs in a Union Pacific Railroad section where GSI plans to carry out its proof-of-concept test under stringent environmental guidelines.

The breakthrough technology -- an environmentally low-impact and energy-self-sustainable gasification process -- has the potential to drastically reduce production costs for oil production compared to conventional development methods and to greatly decrease the nation's dependency on foreign oil.

The Colorado property will provide access to approximately 500 acres of private, oil-shale-rich land in the Piceance Basin, which the company says has the potential to yield approximately 700 million barrels of oil or oil equivalents in the near term.

"With oil prices at the levels we see today -- between $40 and $50 per barrel -- our expected production costs will be highly competitive and should result in substantial returns to our investors and shareholders, and result in a economically-viable source of domestic oil," said Luis Lugo, CEO of Earth Search Sciences Inc., parent company of GSI.

"This agreement gives GSI access to oil shale-rich land for our proof-of-concept development," said Lugo. "The property is optimal for an R&D project because of its proximity to existing infrastructure, transportation and access to a highly-qualified workforce."

On the Web: http://www.earthsearch.com