Oklahoma Uranium

Uranium fever struck Oklahoma last week, carried there by a Texas wildcatter named Samuel Labon Shepherd. Eight months ago Oilman Shepherd was checking land in Nowata County in northeastern Oklahoma with a scintillator, an electric gadget used to find oil as well as uranium. Around him were wells producing oil by the waterflood method, in which oil is recovered by pumping water into the ground, thus increasing the underground pressure and forcing oil up the well. On the surface, the oil and water are separated, and the water is passed through a sand filter before being recirculated through the well.

Near one of the sand filters Shepherd got a surprise: his scintillator needle indicated high radioactivity. Shepherd scooped up some filter sand and shipped it off to the Atomic Energy Commission's office in Grand Junction, Colo. AEC reported that the sand contained up to 0.75% uranium, almost four times as rich as minimum commercial ore. The uranium, said AEC, was being deposited in the sand by water. But since sand is a poor concentrator, it was probably catching only about 20% of the uranium in the water.

Shepherd mixed some coal, a good uranium concentrator, with the sand in one of the oil-well filters. When he sent the filter coal to the Atomic Energy Commission after a few weeks, he got the report that it was several times as rich in uranium as the sand. Shepherd then took some shallow-core samples of the rock in one section of Nowata County and shipped them off to AEC. The assays showed a uranium content well above the lowest commercial grade.

Radioactive Rumors. Keeping his find to himself, Shepherd began buying leases and options on land in Nowata County and started negotiations to buy from Whitehill Oil Corp. several thousand acres where he had found radioactive filters. But two weeks ago that deal fell through. Reason: Climax Molybdenum Co., one of the nation's biggest uranium producers, bought Whitehill--and rumors started running around Wall Street of a big uranium find. In a declining market (see below), Climax stock scooted up six points, to 63 3/4. Climax, which already has an active waterflood oil division, insisted that it bought Whitehill only for the oil. It was astonished when it first heard the uranium reports last week.

Climax acted fast. It flew one of its top uranium geologists out to Nowata, and hired a fleet of "gamma" trucks to scout the area. Reported Climax: some of its oilwell filters were indeed radioactive. But on the basis of its gamma reports and the general geology of the Nowata area, the company did not believe that there was any uranium lode on its land. It speculated that the uranium, spread throughout the oilfields in small quantities in the rock, was leached out by the water and deposited in the filters.

Patent Pending. At week's end, nobody knew how much uranium was in Nowata County--or whether Sam Shepherd might have discovered a practical method of mining uranium by waterflood and filter. Others have tried such a process before--and failed. But it has never been tried as a byproduct of another operation, such as oil producing, that already pays the basic costs. In any case, Shepherd has applied for a patent on his method and is getting ready to ship about ten tons of filter sand from his holdings to AEC for processing.

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