company drilled over 15,000 test holes and conducted extensive fea sibility studies ultimately however utah's commitment to extensive development of the proven re serves was dependent upon the establishment of long-term sales contracts utah's first major step toward its present position as a very prominent factor within austra lian mining came in 1 965 when the first of these contracts was nego tiated in one of the largest metal lurgical coal commitments ever made to japanese interests utah's interests in copper were extended in 1969 when the deci sion was made for the develop ment of the island copper mine and concentrator located on van couver island british columbia taking action as a result of man agement's assessment of long term prospects in 1969 utah sold substantially all of its heavy con struction assets in the face of pro gressive inflation and the increas ing risks in the construction business utah's leadership had concluded that the long-term in dustry outlook was much brighter for mining which is capital inten sive than it was for the more labor intensive construction industry ac cordingly the company began to concentrate its capabilities on the identification and acquisition of ad ditional mineral reserves the ex pansion of its mineral sales back log and the development of new mining and support iacilities recognizing the favorable out look for suppliers of energy-related materials utah extended its re source extraction interests into oil and gas through the fiscal 1 974 ac quisition of ladd petroleum corpo ration since then additional petro leum assets have been acquired today utah international with worldwide activities superficially seems far removed from the utah construction company in its early days the hand tools mule-drawn wagons and coal-powered locomo tives have been replaced by mas sive draglines fleets of haul trucks and huge ocean vessels but per petuated from the past are the company's continuing efforts to identify worldwide economic needs — currently in terms of mineral de posits—and to mobilize capital and technical marketing and man agement skills to fulfill those re quirements utah's heritage contin ues to be a source of strength alter world war ii utah began its diversification into mining and land development projects the ala meda south shore development in california and the cedar city iron ore operation in utah are early ex amples of this diversification pro gram