The present worldwide dependence on imported crude oil may be partly relieved by production of oil from oil shale. More than 3 trillion bbl of oil are contained in known organic-rich shale deposits that will yield 10 or more gal of oil per ton of shale. About two-thirds of this resource is in the Green River Formation that underlies parts of northwestern Colorado, northeastern Utah, and southwestern Wyoming in the United States.

Oil shale, which has been mined mainly utilizing conventional mining and surface-retorting techniques, has produced shale oil continuously during the past century. Although Scotland has the longest history of production (more than 100 years), Russia and China combined have produced about 80% of the approximately 1 billion tons of oil shale mined since 1919. The United States has yet to spawn a commercially viable oil-shale industry; however, since 1919 almost half a million bbl of shale oil have been produced, chiefly from the oil shales of the Green River Formation in Colorado. More than 350,000 bbl of this amount has been produced in large-scale pilot operations since 1964.

Sufficient resources are available on the United States federal prototype oil-shale lease tracts in Colorado and Utah to sustain a 300,000-bbl-per-day industry. Private land in Colorado and Utah, owned by major oil companies, contains enough thick, rich oil shales to produce an additional 550,000 bbl of oil per day. Known deposits outside the United States contain a large enough resource base to maintain a 2.2-million-bbl-per-day shale-oil industry. In addition, some developing countries that have oil-shale deposits of lesser magnitude may establish labor-intensive, less expensive industries with smaller rates of production.

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