The Salina Journal from Salina, Kansas • Page 1

TISundayT 1 1 ne Journal jHome Edition 75 Cents Salina, Kansas December 30,1984 113th year No. 365 48 Pages I From Staff and Wire Reports BARNES The deepest and no doubt the frost costly exploratory well ever drilled in jthe state of Kansas is a dry hole. Texaco has confirmed that the Noel poersch No. 1-35 well in southeast Washing- jton County was being plugged and abandoned after being drilled to a record 11,300 feet. The previous state record was a Ste; yens County well drilled to 8,714 feet.

i The company declined to reveal drilling Texaco spokesman Fred Palmer said, well is being plugged and abandoned $nthout encountering any sign of commercial oil or gas." Palmer said considerable work remained done on the results of the well to eval- "old snap ices roads; Jiree die From Staff and Wire Reports The day after a record high tem- erature of 71 degrees was recorded Salina, a strong cold front pushed imperatives in the area to the 20s id 30s Saturday, with freezing rain sported in areas of the state. An automobile accident near Min- apolis caused by icy road condi- ons resulted in the deaths of three eople Saturday, the Salina Highway atrol reported. Sheriff's departments in Dickinson, illis, Ellsworth, Ottawa, Trego and aline counties reported several mi- or accidents because of icy high- ays. Record high temperatures Friday ere broken or tied in more than 100 ties, the list of which includes cities om Kansas and Nebraska to South larolina and Maryland. While the arctic chill dropped the nercury from balmy to sub-freezing rithin hours in the Midwest, sum- nery air continued to warm the east- trn third of the nation Saturday.

Half a dozen Eastern Seaboard had their warmest December on record, and in some areas the ting snowmelt caused flooding, National Weather Service said. Heavy rainfall brought hazards in the Southwest, where an Arizona JUke breached and caused flooding. I While the East basked, an arctic on County pipe dream turns uate the geological implications in the area. Although Washington County is one of only 15 in Kansas' 105 counties that lacks oil and gas production, Texaco's interest in the area set off a flurry of leasing activity throughout the area. Local farmers caught the fever.

Looking to oil as relief from a depressed farm economy, farmers often congregated near the well to watch its progress. Excitement spread across the county. Oil often dominated the gossip. The news of the dry well deflated many of these farmers' dreams. "We've been pretty hard hit out here," said Margaret Richter, who with her husband, Elver, farms land just south of the Poersch well.

"We've been hailed out twice and frozen out once in the last three years. Its pretty rough fanning. We had high hopes." Rick Reed, who lives near the Poersch land, said he kept a close watch on the drilling activity, watching for signs of a successful oil strike. "I could see (the drilling rig) when I went to bed, and I could see it when I got up in the morning," Reed said. "The way the farm situation is, it would have been nice.

"I was let down, but being realistic, there is always tomorrow," he said. "Who's to say it's over? Farmers are eternal optimists." Texaco began drilling the well in September under extremely tight security. The well was drilled into a recently recog- nized geological formation called the Mid- Continent Rift, a deeply buried valley containing sediments from 600 million to a billion years old. The valley extends from northeast Kansas, 700 miles northeastward to the western end of Lake Superior and is up to 40 miles wide. Since the discovery and subsurface mapping of the buried valley within the last few years, geologists have speculated about the possibility of oil or gas accumulation in sediments of such great age.

Don Steeples, a geophysicist with the Kansas State Geological Survey at the University of Kansas recently said the well was "The hottest place in the world that's never produced a drop of oil." Steeples had previously voiced reserva- tions on the likelihood of oil or gas in the formation. "The question is whether conditions will allow the accumulation of hydrocarbons (oil or gas) in rocks 600 million years old. These rocks are considerably older than that," he said. Since oil and gas are the residual matter of ancient life forms, the geologists have questioned the amount of oil possible from a time in which life forms were few and simple. Some of the geologists' questions now have been answered.

Texaco, however, is required by law to send samples of the well (See Dry, Page 9) (See Storm, Page 9) Elaine Norman places plastic covering over a window Saturday to keep out cold winter ah- as her 2-year-old son Michael watches hi warm comfort. Mickey Mouse keeps packing 'em in ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) For only the second time in its 29-year history, Disneyland had to close its gates for a time Friday because it couldn't hold any more people, park officials "This generally is our biggest week of the ear, if we get good weather," Disneyland pokesman Bob Roth said on Saturday. "We had I oor weather for a couple of days, so what we ot Friday was part of Thursday's and part of Wednesday's crowd." Disneyland's parking lot, which has 11,500 spaces, filled at 1:30 p.m. Friday and the gates were closed from 2 p.m.

to 5 p.m. An estimated 70,000 people entered the park. While that was a record for the year, it was not a Disneyland record, Roth said. "Our biggest day ever was Aug. 16, 1969," he said.

"It was about a week after the Haunted Mansion opened up. We had 82,516 people." The park often has held 70,000 people, but they usually are more spread out during the day, he said. The only other time Disneyland closed its gates and stopped selling admissions because it had reached capacity was July 4, 1976, the U.S. Bicentennial. "This was characteristic of a winter crowd rather than a summer crowd," Roth said.

"They all came in the morning. During the summer, some will come in the late afternoon and evening." "I don't know quite how to describe it except that it appears that the entire planet has been emptied out into Disneyland," police Lt. Roger Baker said Friday. "The whole place has turned into Mickey Mouseland." Streets and freeways surrounding Disneyland were jammed but police reported only a few minor accidents. On Saturday, despite comfortable temperatures in the mid-60s, a few parking places remained and officials said the gates would remain open.

The crowds Friday were good news for Disneyland, which suffered its worst summer in a decade last summer. During July and August, when the Olympic Games were held in Southern, California, attendance at Disneyland was down 20 percent, the company said. Other amusement parks in the area reported similar drops. JToday The Journal takes a look back at the events that made 1984 special. See Pages 6-7.

Inside Business 26-27 Classified 31-34 Entertainment 35 Great Plains 29 Living Today 19-23 3 5 On the Record 9 Opinion 4 Sports 11-17 Weather 9 Weather KANSAS Partly sunny today in the north and mostly cloudy In the south. Highs in the mid-30s to lower 40s. Partly cloudy tonight with lows in the teens in the north to the 20s in the south. Mostly cloudy and cold Monday with a chance of snow. Highs in the 20s in the north to lower 30s in the south.

Killer chemicals reach Georgia after rejection by foreign ports NORFOLK, Va. (AP) A 15-ton shipment of methyl isocyanate, the chemical that killed more than 2,000 people in India, arrived in this port city Saturday after being refused by Brazil, and was hauled safely to a Union Carbide plant in Georgia. The two tractor-trailers carrying the chemical arrived late Saturday night at the Union Carbide chemical processing plant in Woodbine, where it will be processed into pesticide, said a guard at the plant who refused to give his name. Company hazardous chemical experts, federal safety inspectors, the U.S. Coast Guard and various state authorities inspected the shipment before it left for the plant.

State police patrols accompanied the trucks carrying the liquid chemical as they began the trip south by interstate highway through Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. North Carolina Highway Patrol officers picked up the escort when the trucks crossed the state line, and emergency personnel had been placed on standby. "They are doing it (escorting) to make people feel safer," said Lt. W.H. Long of the Highway Patrol.

The methyl isocyanate shipment was the second of three rejected by foreign ports since Dec. 3, when the chemical leaked from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, and turned to gas on contact with the air. A first shipment rejected by Brazil was returned to Norfolk International Terminals Dec. 10 and sent to Georgia by truck. The third, turned back by France, is scheduled to return Jan.

8. The ship carrying the chemical entered the port of Hampton Roads early Saturday morning. The 68 55- gallon stainless steel drums were packed in two 20-foot containers aboard the American Rigel, a United States Lines cargo vessel. The Coast Guard inspected the cargo as the ship entered the port, and the Union Carbide team opened the two containers after the vessel docked. "There were absolutely no problems associated with the methyl iso- cyanate cargo," said Coast Guard Lt.

Cmdr. Fred Brox. The chemical will be processed into the pesticide Temik at the Woodbine plant, said Mary Anne Ford, a spokeswoman for Union Carbide. Leonard Ledbetter, commissioner of Georgia's Department of Natural Resources, said a team trained in disaster drills was ordered to monitor the shipment in that state. But Ledbetter said the possibility of an accident involving the chemical "is much less now than it would have been a month ago" because of the precautions and because of the relatively small quantity involved.

U.S. rejects limits in arms talks plan By The New York Times WASHINGTON White House officials said Saturday that preliminary planning for the arms talks with the Soviet Union had produced a consensus that the United States would not agree to limit research for a long-range defense against missiles. This apparent agreement, contained in the papers being flown to California Saturday for President Reagan's perusal, was made known by officials who sought to end confusion over the administration's position. The officials said the administration was prepared to be more flexible on procedural issues that are the ostensible reason for the meeting between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Foreign Minister Andrei A.

Gromyko in Geneva Jan. 7 and 8. It also is ready, they said, to live up to Reagan's commitment last September to discuss restraints on testing a new anti- satellite weapon if negotiations on both offensive and defensive weapons resume. "We're open about how the talks should be arranged after Geneva," a White House official said. "I don't think we're going to fall on our sword for a specific framework." He said several possibilities had been discussed in the last month of interagency meetings in Washington.

The two sides are supposed to discuss ways to hold negotiations on the whole range of nuclear and outer-space weapons. The Soviet Union has stressed in its statements that it believes priority should be given to halting work on anti-satellite weapons and the longer-term anti-missile program that the administration calls the Strategic Defense Initiative and that is often called the "Star Wars" plan. A senior official said that given the uncertainties of how the Soviet Union will react to the administration's unwillingness to negotiate on the missile-defense research and lacking advance knowledge of the Soviet position on how to resume the stalled negotiations on offensive weapons, it was possible that the Geneva talks might not produce more than an agreement to meet again. That is why, he continued, Reagan said Friday, "A two-day meeting cannot solve the complicated issues before us." Reagan has viewed the missile-defense program, still in its early research phase, as a way to end dependence on offensive weapons to deter a war. The Americans believe that stability can be enhanced by a mix of defensive weapons and a reduction in the number of highly accurate land-based offensive missiles, White House officials said.

Testing and deployment of new anti-missile weapons are banned by the 1972 antiballistic missile treaty, and senior officials have pledged that the United States does not plan to violate that accord. Since research will not reach that stage for several years, the Soviet concerns are premature, they said..