Colorado's oil shale is key to ending oil imports

It is entirely possible that Colorado’s extensive oil shale deposits will ultimately prove to be the key to ending America’s need to import foreign oil. A bold statement, no doubt, but one that is nearing reality.

Colorado’s oil shale deposits arecontained in thefar reaching Green River Formation found in much of northwest Colorado, southwest Wyoming and northeast Utah. This, so called, “oil shale” is actually an “oil rock” in which a complex hydrocarbon compound called “kerogen” actually makes up part of the rock. In conventional oil reservoirs, liquid oil ranging from about the density of diesel fuel (high gravity or “light”) to as thick as silicon grout (low gravity or “heavy”) is found between and around the other mineral or rock grains making up the rock. In “oil shale”, the kerogen is part of the rock fabric. In conventional reservoirs, oil and natural gas can be pumped from the subsurface, treated and refined into various petroleum products like diesel, gasoline, lubricating oil, fuel oil and even wax. With oil shale, the rock itself must be heated either on the surface after mining and crushing or, in a new and exciting technology being developed by Shell Oil Company, heated underground to create liquid crude oil and then pumped to the surface.

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