A PLACE ONCE ALIVE, PART 1, AN ESSAY ON A DEFUNCT INDUSTRY

         During about a six month period that began in late 1990, I was involved as a Con­sultant in an Out­placement Program for the mining company UNICAL, one of three mining companies that were either shut down or were shutting down large oil shale mining opera­tions near Parachute Colora­do. I had participated in a small way in this min­ing region's beginning over ten years before. In that involve­ment I worked on the Man­power Plan to assist the client company (Exxon Mining) to determine how many people it needed for its new work­force. Years later when the project was realized in its peak, the compa­nies that participated in this massive outlay of money (Exxon, Shell Oil and UNICAL) raised the expecta­tions of literally tens of thousands of people that in this operation's continu­ance, which could have lasted for a century, it would be a place for ca­reers, for lives, for roots and for happi­ness. Now in a little over ten years, I was about to witness its final phase of shut-down.

         A plan to develop the oil-bearing shale in this area was initiat­ed about 1977 or 1978, when during the world eco­nomic oil crisis of that time it was deter­mined that oil prices had risen enough to make this sort of project feasible. The U.S. Con­gress encouraged companies to explore the idea of creating synthetic crude oil out of oil-bearing shale on the Colorado Plateau.  Sever­al major oil compa­nies took the challenge. Because of the gigantic de­posit in the canyons north of Parachute, Colorado, this location was chosen for development by Shell Oil, Exxon Minerals Company and UNICAL. Con­gress inter­vened with an offer to subsidize the development and both Shell Oil and UNICAL bought in, also buying into a long-term commit­ment to produce oil with the government’s promise to pay the companies for the difference in cost of production over sales price for the oil. For rea­sons known only by chief execu­tives at the time, Exxon chose to go for the develop­ment, but decided to invest its own money and not use the gov­ern­ment subsidies.

         During the next few short years a con­struction workforce was amassed of over fifty thousand workers to open up the three mining properties. Another workforce, almost as large as the one used to open the mining properties was assem­bled to build a new model city near Parachute Colorado able to house over one hundred thousand peo­ple to support the area's new operations and services. This project was partially funded by the Government and managed by Exxon Minerals. The new planned city of Battlement Mesa rose on a bluff about twenty miles south of the mine site hosting single family homes, con­dos, apartments, shopping centers, schools, church­es, recreations areas including an eighteen hole golf course and a lake and all the other in­frastruc­ture needed to support this industri­al city.

         Several miles up a canyon from Parachute on the way to the mining properties, on land owned by UNICAL, this com­pany carved wide roads up the canyon, across the hillsides and cliffs to begin tunnel­ing into the eighty foot high band of oil-bearing shale said to contain one of the nation's largest depos­its of oil. The other two companies did almost the same with their own claims. Most every­thing went under­ground in­cluding the mine offices, crushing equip­ment and mined-earth prepa­ration equip­ment. The tunnels for mov­ing the earth were in most cases one hundred feet wide by eighty feet high. Large trucks able to haul over eighty tons of rock were easily able to ma­neuver in these large tunnels. To get the most of the excavation in these mining systems, long tunnels, some over one mile in length were run parallel with pillars left be­tween them to hold the ceilings in place. During its years of production these tunnels networked in a large checkerboard fashion until several square miles were exca­vated.

         Nothing was spared by the com­panies to get the most modern technolo­gy and to pro­duce the syn­thetic crude oil at the least cost. UNICAL designed and built a large clean­ing and refining process plant down canyon from the mines to serve its own needs and to service the oil production coming out of Exxon's and Shell's opera­tions. An experimental process when it first began, production of synthetic crude oil from shale was a relative success, albeit expensive. The major deterrent was cost of production that started high and only increased over time. All extra production costs above what UNICAL and Shell Oil could sell the oil for were reimbursed by the government up to forty dollars a barrel. In its last stages of its production, UNICAL was able to sell oil for only eighteen dollars per barrel, but it was costing over fifty-one dollars a barrel to pro­duce the oil. When I got involved in the Outplacement Program for UNICAL just when they were about to start shutting down their production, losses were over one hun­dred thousand dollars a day. These losses had been going on for three years when UNICAL (the last of the three to do this) decided to shut down all its operations both in the mine and the refinery. This company had been in operation for over ten years by then.

         Along with its own mine Exxon managed the building of the planned city of Battlement Mesa and came out making a profit on the city from reimbursements it received from the Government and the other two companies that partici­pated in the cost of its development. But like the others, Exxon's costs for oil production were well over forty dollars per barrel leaving it in the red (without government subsidies) over twenty dollars per barrel at times. Exxon pulled out and shut down opera­tions less than three years into production. Shell Oil soon followed because of their high costs of production and size­able losses even after government subsidies. UNICAL stayed on for over nine years improving their pro­duction efficiency through extraordi­nary quality mea­sures, but it finally had to throw in the towel at mounting losses and due to losses it was facing in several other mining ventures it was into, namely molybdenum mining in Colorado and Northern New Mexico.

         When their shutdown was eminent, UNICAL hired the company I was contracting with to assist the employees that were being furloughed piecemeal over a six to nine month shutdown period to find jobs in other locations. The shutting-down process actually took over six months to complete but the Outplacement Program continued for another few months. Over nine hundred UNICAL employees lost their jobs. After about three months of working with the people being laid off (sometime in April of 1991) I was able to capture the ambi­ence of the people's frustration and trials and wrote some words describ­ing what I was observing:

I saw a place that was quickly dying; this new planned city called Battlement Mesa. It had once been alive with thousands of peo­ple mov­ing about, doing their jobs and living their lives to their full­est. But now where some of the places had been flour­ishing years before, there were crumbling towers, buildings in ill-repair and roads where weeds were taking back their natural plac­es. These rust­ing parts were re­minders of a day and era gone by . . . a story told, but not forgotten while more was hap­pening to reinforce the sadness of this place. What remained of these concrete pieces and twisted columns stood on, resisting all they could of nature's demands, but what man had created was eventually lost to the forces of nature.

        Dead though it was in many of its parts, the place still lived in others. With her patterns silhou­etted against the evening sky, she breathed her force­ful message in the sky . . . having proof that through man's efforts she still owned what she held. What was still there for just a short time was a place alive with its structures shivering under the blasts and grinding actions of its captors. To release her treasures, man paid his price . . . a price that has left him weak and vulner­able and lost in his knowl­edge about the reason for his actions in the first place.

        But soon this place will be silent again. The efforts of so many sincere, hard-working people will be stilled. The foot­steps they made in the acrid dust of those under­ground chambers will be but a shadow in the memo­ries of those that now suffer from rendering themselves to this place, and giving it all, as if it were the last place they would ever work and live. The place will again return to the tur­keys in its bottomlands along the river and to its deer and elk on the ridges and in the buck brush along the road.

        I wonder if this place will ever live again. Will man in his ever con­tinu­ing race to capture nature's trea­sures held ever so tightly in these holes and crevices on the mountain, make her a cap­tured thing? Will the history of this pres­ent death be lost in the grow­ing new­ness of another, fu­ture quest? Will these now fleshly paint­ed struc­tures I saw every­where be soon rusting and rotting in their place? Or will they be laid aside in a tan­gled mess of waste like those that went before? Will its foundations hold their own through another show of man's beginning here? Per­haps. What if there's a war or an­other shortage of oil? Is it possible anoth­er struc­ture will be built to take its place? I'm sure man will attempt again to dig and scrape and heat this oil to draw it from its settling place from eons ago. It's just a matter of time. But in the meantime while those that lost this first battle and are out of work will suffer. I know some will ask, "Why be con­cerned? It's just one more mistake of our time and man's insuring need for nature's blood and flesh." Others will surely say, "Its only part of our need to survive. We must do this to protect what we have. So stop your whining and re­morse."

        Both will be right in what they say of man's arriv­al and depar­ture from this mountain's face. But I re­member another ghostly mine some­thing like this in Arizona that I saw a long time ago. I heard its ghostly voices when I was there. I heard the agony of its people long gone now from its change-rooms and work places. I heard the cries from their hearts when they were let go. I heard the whispering from that moun­tain's midst--from the sweat of all the toil man had given to recover its trea­sures. I know from the years when men, alive in their "owner­ship" of that place, worked and told stories and laid wagers, and some served their egos while they worked their way to the top. All those Arizona miners had the same eager­ness as these people here in Para­chute and Battlement Mesa. I saw them doing their best to be loyal to the very last. I heard a man say, "I broke my ass for this place, for what? I didn't want it to go silent; I didn't want to lose my house that I thought would be my last."

        I morn their loss . . . this product of man's making. Like all those that came before, these men and women of devotion to this cause will move along to some new quest. And most will grow and prosper again, I'm sure. Once again they will work and tell their stories and make wagers on what they have. But I still morn this great exodus from this place. Another of man's experienc­es . . . of man's short mo­ments of retreat from what he's learned. And they now leave again. 

         I worked in Parachute until most of the work­ers were gone, then we moved our office to Grand Junc­tion Colorado to continue to council and help these dis­placed workers find new jobs. Though this was a common thing for me to experience, I think the loss of this place for these people was more than just a shutdown of a mine. It seems to me to be more of a silencing of a dream . . . one held sincerely in the hearts of many that had created it. I worried about their lost dream, albeit the results of their dream were destined to make life easier for many while polluting our planet more. But will these dreamers dream again? Will they create or cause another revolution of thought like they did there in Parachute? I worry that they will forever feel they were sold out to the bidder of their destiny and that they will therein­after remain silent about their dreams.