Oil Shale Reserves - Geographical Allocation

Geographical Allocation

There is no comprehensive overview of oil shale geographical allocation around the world. Around 600 known oil shale deposits are diversely spread throughout the earth, and are found on every continent with the possible exception of Antarctica, which has not yet been explored for oil shale. Oil shale resources can be concentrated in a large confined deposit such as the Green River formations, which were formed by a large inland lake. These can be many meters thick but limited by the size of the original lake. They may also resemble the deposits found along the eastern American seaboard, which were the product of a shallow sea, in that they may be quite thin but laterally expansive, covering thousands of square kilometers.

The table below reports reserves by estimated amount of shale oil. Shale oil refers to synthetic oil obtained by heating organic material (kerogen) contained in oil shale to a temperature which will separate it into oil, combustible gas, and the residual carbon that remains in the spent shale. All figures are presented in barrels and metric tons.