OIL SHALE FACT SHEET

There’s a saying in parts of northwest Colorado: “Oil Shale has always had a promising
future…and always will”. In the early 1980’s small towns there experienced a dramatic
oil shale boom and bust that coincided with record prices for oil. The problem is that it
was simply too expensive to extract and produce oil from these sediments. Energy
companies are exploring new technologies, but they remain, at best, many years from
realization.

Oil shale is a general term for sedimentary rock that contain solid bituminous
compounds that when heated release a form of liquid petroleum. The world’s largest
known oil shale deposits are found in the Green River Formation, which lies beneath the
states of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. Although supporters like to say that more than
a trillion barrels of oil is contained in these deposits, estimates of the amount that is
actually recoverable are closer to half that amount. And recovering the oil is no small
feat. It takes tremendous amounts of both energy and water to actually reach and
produce oil from these sediments.

• Production of petroleum from oil shale will produce significantly higher amounts
of carbon dioxide than conventional crude oil operations and would have
negative impacts on air quality in states already struggling to meet federal air
pollution standard.1

• Mining and processing oil shale consumes 2-5 gallons of water per gallon of
refinery-ready oil. Providing 25% of U.S. oil demand would require 400-1000
million gallons of water per day. Because oil shale resources are predominantly
located in areas where water availability is limited and has a high value, oil shale
development may be constrained. 2

• To produce 200,000 barrels of oil a day, four typical coal generation plants would
be needed.3

• Boosters of oil shale often talk about extracting one million barrels of oil per day.
At that rate, upwards of 20 coal-fired power plants would be required, burning
more than 50 million tons of coal annually.4
1Rand Corporation/National Energy Technology Laboratory/DOE Oil Shale Development in the United States: Prospects and
Policy Issues, 20005, http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG414.pdf
2 DOE Report to Congress, “Energy Demands on Water Resources” , 2006
http://www.sandia.gov/energy-water/docs/121-RptToCongress-EWwEIAcomments-FINAL.pdf
3Schuster, Erik. “Tracking New Coal-Fired Power Plants,” Department of Energy: National Energy Technology Laboratory,
February 18, 2008, p. 14.
4Bartis, James T., et al. “Oil Shale Development in the United States: Prospects and Policy Issues,” Rand Corporation, 2005, p.
23. http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG414.pdf