Hi, All:

I have done some research on the implementation of the Ecoshale system in Utah. Apparently, there has been a concerted push by environmental groups (one in particular) to challenge implementation of the system. As I understand it, the basic position of the environmental lobby is that the oil shales in Utah should not be developed. There was a suit brought in court to block the ecoshale pilot project, that ultimately was not successful. Red Leaf had to apply for a permit to develop from the Utah water board, and the permit was provisionally granted in August 2013, subject to public submissions.

Upon granting the provisonal permit, a period of 60 days (?) began for submission of counter-arguments from the public, which is now over. As I understand it from looking at these submissions, the chief objection is now that although significant monitoring of leakage from the eco shale capsule has been proposed by red leaf in their amended proposal, the monitoring is not enough. It seems as though the environmental lobby wants continous monitoring from all sides of the eco shale capsule.

It looks to me as though the final permits to develop will be granted by the Utah water board; but I think Red Leaf is still waiting on this.The Red Leaf system is, as I understand it, a strip mining system, where the reclamation of the mined property is continuous and on-going. Basically, as you roll out the system, you remediate the land that has been mined. The water usage is very low, mostly to keep down dust and allow for water needs of the workers. It does seem to me as though the system would be most useful for shallow to medium deposits of shale; it will work for gas and for oil bearing rock, or any combination of the two.

In order to demonstrate that there are no environmental consequences from the system, the results of the commercial scale pilot will have to be monitored and evaluated. Presumably, the small-scale pilot had no emissions problem, so it looks to me as though the environmental lobby is presuming problems from the process, where, in fact, none have been shown to be consequent upon implementation of the system.

The capsule, once the rock has been cooked to 900 degrees for 90 days, looks like a large pot containing the cooked shale, which has released most of its oil and gas.

Hope this helps...and that i haven't misunderstood the process. All documents are on the web under an ecoshale utah permit search. I must say, there is very little on the Red Leaf website. There has been more info on the Tomco site, an oil company which is planning to use the Ecoshale system on their property in Utah. Tomco (GB) stock price has responded positively to permit developments with Red Leaf in Utah.

Vlad