Poor article.
Critical item: Oil shale and shale oil is not the same thing. This is talking about oil shale and oil shale is not oil. It is kerogen. Kerogen doesn’t refine. It’s not oil.
Converting kerogen to oil is similar to converting coal or methane to oil. You have to expend enormous amounts of joules to get the desired result. The process can’t scale. There is never enough local water (or joules) to make it happen.
People always want to point at various processes for synthesizing oil and say there will always be enough. It’s not true. Synthesis has never shown any potential for doing 75 million barrels / day.
This article is by the publisher of the newspaper Horovitz about Vinegar, a genius in the field. They are not just blowing smoke, pardon the pun.
Here is another take from the Huffington Post. The idea is that Vinegar has a new method to obtain the heat. Where the cost outweighs the benefit you have nothing, of course. But that is not the case here.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-finkDaniel%20Fink/will-israel-become-an-oil_b_3640959.html