Tata Chemicals (Soda Ash) Partners and its subsidiary (collectively, “TCSAP “ or the “Partnership” or the “Company”) operates a facility in Green River. TCSAP is a subsidiary of Tata Chemicals (Soda Ash) Partners Holdings and Subsidiaries (“TCSAP Holdings”). TCSAP Holdings is a partnership of which 75% is owned by Tata Chemicals North America Inc. (“TCNA”) and 25% is owned by Valley Holdings, Inc. (“VHI”), the parent of TCNA.
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Summary:
Tata, Solvay and Tronox all extract trona from Bed 17, the largest mineable seam of more than two dozen within the Patch, called the Known Sodium Leasing Area (KSLA). The KSLA is divided into a checkerboard pattern of mile-square land tracts, primarily owned by the federal government (48%), and Anadarko Minerals (48%), and the remainder by the state and private interests.
Across the KSLA, six beds, or seams, are the main focus of mining. Tata, Solvay and Tronox are working in Bed 17 while Ciner is active in the shallower Beds 25 and 24. Bed 14 contains an estimated 5.4 billion tons of recoverable reserves, while Bed 17 contains 7 billion tons and currently accounts for 75% of trona production. Depth-wise, these two beds are located within 100 vertical ft of each other: Bed 17 at a 1,500-ft mining depth and Bed 14 at 1,600 ft.
The seams tend to be at shallower depth at the north end of the patch-starting around 800 ft down-dipping toward the south to 2,000 ft.
The trona (hydrated sodium bicarbonate carbonate) beds of Sweetwater County, Wyoming are noted for a variety of rare evaporite minerals. The Green River Formation, is the type locality for eight rare minerals: bradleyite, ewaldite, loughlinite, mckelveyite-(Y), norsethite, paralabuntsovite-Mg, shortite and wegscheiderite. It also has a natural occurrence of moissanite (SiC) and 23 other valid mineral species.