GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.—The inventor of a process to draw oil from shale in western Colorado was once fined for not telling stockholders of the failure of a previous venture.
“That’s raking over very old ground now,” Chris Ryan, chairman of Blue Ensign Technologies, which is raising money to develop its oil shale rights in Australia, told the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.
Ryan said John Rendall, who developed the Rendall Process licensed to Blue Ensign, has no hand in the management or the board of directors of the company. He does hold a 43 percent share in the company. His past was first reported by Bloomberg.com on Friday.
Rendall’s previous failure as chairman of Solv-Ex Corp. in the 1990s with the development of tar sands resulted in $825 million in losses for investors. He was fined $5,000 for not telling more recent investors of the losses.
“Shale is quite a bit different from tar sands,” said Ryan.
Shale will be treated with a liquid and therefore could avoid many of the harmful environmental effects associated with other methods, such as cooking petroleum out of shale in retorts, said Ryan.
It’s been tested only in labs so far, officials said, and Ryan said his claim has been independently verified.
Blue Ensign’s investment portfolios say it remains interested in acquiring stakes in land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
Efforts nearly 20 years ago to develop oil shale in Colorado went bust, but as other more conventional sources have been depleted they are attracting interest again. The industry also has developed new methods to get it out of the ground. Previous efforts even included detonating nuclear bombs deep below ground.
