I was curious about this oil shale junk so I did a little research.
Low end estimates put oil shale at about 1.5 trillion barrels, high end being 2.6. Being conservative and using the low end estimate (using 21 million barrels a day US consumption) gives just under 200 years of US domestic supply. Wowzas! Didn't know oil shale was that big a deal.
I think profitability concerns for oil companies have just as much to do with the hesitancy to extract oil shale as treehugger's concerns do. They are going to wait until prices stay high long enough for this to be justified.
PD
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