Oct 26 2010
Natural Resources USA Corporation, (OTC Bulletin Board: AALA), previously known as AmerAlia, Inc., announced that it has been advised by the Washington office of the Bureau of Land Management that its nomination for an Oil Shale Research, Development, and Demonstration lease in Colorado has been advanced to the next stage of its review process.
The company's nomination will now be forwarded to the agency's Colorado and Utah offices for review in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act. The review is expected to take from 4 to 18 months to complete.
The nominated land comprises 160 acres, adjoining the company's sodium leases northwest of Rifle, Colorado, with an additional 480 acres reserved for a potential commercial lease. The application was lodged by Natural Soda Holdings, a wholly owned subsidiary of Natural Resources.
CEO, Mr. Bill Gunn, said, "We are pleased to see the BLM move our application to the next evaluation stage."
"Our plan is to develop a process for the recovery of oil from oil shale that would also enable us to recover more nahcolite."
Natural Soda, another Natural Resources subsidiary, recovers sodium bicarbonate from nahcolite using solution mining from its sodium leases. Natural Soda is the second largest producer of sodium bicarbonate in North America.
Oil shale is a fine-grained sedimentary rock containing organic matter from which shale oil may be produced. The organic matter, called kerogen, is contained within rock which can be extracted and processed into usable transportation fuel.
The Task Force on Strategic Unconventional Fuels reported in 2007 that the oil shale deposits found on federal lands in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming contained an estimated 1.5 trillion barrels of oil.
Source: Natural Resources USA Corporation