[saganite]

This has nothing to do with the shale oil and gas being recovered in SD and Texas among others and doesn’t even refer to the type of shale drilling going on now. The oil in the areas covered by this is in the form of kerogen and needs to be cooked in situ to recover. It is so tightly bound to the shale rock it won’t flow without the cooking process.

[sgtyork]

-—The oil in the areas covered by this is in the form of kerogen and needs to be cooked in situ to recover...

While it might be true that this doesn’t affect current oil recoveries, it does impact the overall market and the confidence of those who must take risks to find new energy for us. There might new technologies found tomorrow which would make this area profitable but its now off-limits.

[spokeshave]

The Green River Formations....

This dosn't say anything about kerogen.

The Green River Formation, the world’s largest oil shale deposit, is located in a largely vacant region of mostly federal land on the western edge of the Rocky Mountains that includes portions of Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado (see map below).

Here’s an excerpt from testimony about the Green River Formation that was provided on Thursday by Anu K. Mittal, Government Accountability Office (GAO) Director of Natural Resources and Environment, to the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology titled “Unconventional Oil and Gas Production: Opportunities and Challenges of Oil Shale Development“:

“The Green River Formation—an assemblage of over 1,000 feet of sedimentary rocks that lie beneath parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming—contains the world’s largest deposits of oil shale. USGS estimates that the Green River Formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil, and about half of this may be recoverable, depending on available technology and economic conditions.

The Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, estimates that 30 to 60 percent of the oil shale in the Green River Formation can be recovered. At the midpoint of this estimate, almost half of the 3 trillion barrels of oil would be recoverable. This is an amount about equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.”