The technology has been around for a long time to extract the oil from the Green River Shales.
All we are seeing is variations on the basic theme of: Heat the shale and get the oil out.
WIll it be extensively developed/implemented?
The last time someone invested a chunk in that, Unocal (iirc), eventually left Parachute, CO with their tail between their legs.
Even now, I wouldn't put out money past prototypes and research, without some sort of guarantee the government wasn't going to turn around and bite me as soon as it was ramped up for production.
With the environazis still screeching about anthropogenic climate change, and shrilly howling for shutting down more solutions to the energy problem, I'd be d@mned cautious about doing any more than I needed to to hold the leases.
That includes Juan McCain, who has not done anything to show me he has seen the light in re: anthropogenic Global Warming, which it turns out, simply does not exist.
This is the time the new tech from the last slowdown is implemented and refined, and the time money is spent on R&D, but without some serious reason to believe there will be a ROI to cheer about, it isn't going to show unless it produces immmediate results.
Keep in mind Exxon was there because of the government subsidies. It was an uneconomic process at the time. Without tax-payer dollars, they never would have been there at that time.
When the subsidies ended, so did jobs. Always a bad way, having politicians selecting technologies.