In the early 1980s, industry and government took a hard look at the economics of extracting oil from vast deposits of shale that lie beneath the western United States. Oil prices subsided, and interest waned. With oil prices spiking and global demand showing no signs of abating, reexamining the economics of oil shale makes sense. In this report, the authors describe oil shale resources; suitability, cost, and performance of new technologies; and key policy issues that need to be addressed by government decisionmakers in the near future.

First published in 1989, Boomtown Blues examines the remarkable 100-year history of oil shale development and chronicles the social, environmental, and financial havoc created by the industryÂ’s continual cycles of boom and bust.

Abundant oil shale deposits exist in the United States that can contribute significantly towards the nation's energy security. About one trillion barrels of oil can be recovered from the U.S. oil shale resources. These huge domestic oil resources are currently untapped. Interest in developing the oil shale resources of the United States of America has been rekindled in the last few years as a result of high prices of conventional crude oil and concerns about reliable, sustainable, and secure energy supplies to meet our nation's growing demand for liquid fuels. The technology to develop affordable fuels from oil shale in an environmentally sound manner requires advances in research, development and demonstration (RD&D).

Recently, research and development activities on oil shale have increased tremendously in an effort to advance oil shale technology and consequently accelerate its commercial development, while minimizing the environmental impact. This symposium series book describes recent research advances and developments of various aspects (characteristics, production, processing, upgrading, utilization, environmental, socio-economics, policy, and legal) of oil shale. The book will be useful to technology developers, investors, decision makers both in the private and public sectors, environmental regulators, researchers and academia.

Understanding the effects of varying pyrolysis conditions on yield and composition of products from oil shales is important for process optimization. The principal objective of this study was to investigate how heating rate, final heat treatment temperature and holding time at final temperature affect the yield and composition of pyrolysis products. A full range of analyses had been run in order to characterize oil shale samples and identify effects of process conditions. A preliminary computed tomography (CT) scan analysis had been peformed for the first time in the literature and kerogen in the shale matrix was successfully located . The CT scanning of the a sample before and after pyrolysis showed changes in the distribution of kerogen in the shale matrix, indicating the great potential of this technique for monitoring liquid evolution in ex-situ and in-situ pyrolysis experiments in the laboratory. This information will be very useful particularly for designing in-situ pyrolysis processes for commercial production of shale oil.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.