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Oil shale, also known as kerogen shale, is an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock containing kerogen (a solid mixture of organic chemical compounds) from which liquid hydrocarbons called shale oil (not to be confused with tight oil—crude oil occurring naturally in shales) can be produced.
Shale oil is a substitute for conventional crude oil; however, extracting shale oil from oil shale is more costly than the production of conventional crude oil both financially and in terms of its environmental impact. Deposits of oil shale occur around the world, including major deposits in the United States. Estimates of global deposits range from 4.8 to 5 trillion barrels (760×109 to 790×109 m3) of oil in place. More...
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If you were celebrating U.S. energy independence, you can blow the candles out, for now. If you were a Californian clicking your heels at having 2/3 of all the shale oil in the lower 48 states, you can stop clicking. Why? The U.S. government says it has overestimated--by 96 percent--the amount of recoverable shale oil California has. This spectacular revision, confirmed to ABC News by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), will be included in `Assumptions to the Annual Energy Outlook 2014,` to be published by the Administration in June.
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