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3768 RUEDI DA.c'\I A..,D RESERVOIR, COLO. 77 \. Ourrent world picture The oil shale industries of the "orld lire resurgent. Swetlen now is expanding its output of shale oil production SO percent. Oil shale is the principal source of Sweden's sulfur and ammonia as. well as its only domestic source of oil. Spain has a new oil shale operation geared principally to the pro- duction of luLricants. Russia reportedly is expandlllg shale oil and shale gas out.put. in satellite Estonia. A new 10,OllO-barrel-per-day plant has been announced at Kocht.la Jarwe, and Russian technical journals for several years haye been reporting on research in the field of oil shale. For abo1lt 10 years, Brazil has conduded research and development work lellding toward utilization of its extensive oil shale resources. A large commercial operatiun within the llext few year~ seems likely. Elsewhere, new oil shale projects ha.ve been annowlced or investiga- tions are in prog'l'ess-Thailund, Australia, Belgian Congo, Yugo-- slavia-almost e\'el'ywhere that oil shale is known to exist.. Recent oil shale actt/:iti.e8 ,in the United States The eUl'rent ern. of interest in oil ~hHle in the United States beO'an during '\Vorld 'Val' II, and has cont.inueu. wit.hout int.errupt.ion. Ac- ti\'itiE's mainly have ueen researeh and development on improved mining, retorting, and refining methods HHd .in the acquisition of oil shal.e properties. "'ater filings also have been mnde by several com- pUBles. With the exception of the naval oil shale reserves near Rifle, the most accessible oil shale lands are privately owned. A ma.jority of the major oil companies have shale huluings. Se\'eral are increasing their reserves and some already may be measured in the billions of barrel:;. During the past 15 years, t.he Federal Government, private emu. pauies, and individuals have spent about $50 million on oil shale. :r.lol'e than half of these expenditures were by private companies llnd incli\'iduals. Researl2h by ooth Goyernment and indust.ry on new methods of shale oil production and utilization has obtained outstand- Ing results. 'The technology is straightfor'>l":lrd. The shale first. must be mined, then mbject.ed to II heatin~ process (retorting) to distill from it II crude oil, and, finallY, the oil must be refined to usable Jlroducts. A low-cost mining met.hod adapt.ed to certain fa.vorn.ble cha.racteris- tics of the Colorado oil shale deposits has been de\'eloped and demon- strated in two large-scnle experimental mines, one opera.ted privately. A large mining concern is conducting additional experimental work on the method. Two outsta.nding new retorting processes ha.ve been demonstrated on a pilot-plant scale, OJle I'esulting~from the Go\'ernmenfs research pro. gram, the other priyately finance'1. The latter process is in an ad- vanced stage of dc\.elopment, having been successfully operated at a capacity llPproaching t.hat of a commercial-sized retort (1,000 tons per doy). Shale oil refining resea,reh has been aided grelltly by new processes develo\)ed to refine high-sulfur crude oils. Refining methods are com- mercia ly available to convert crude shale oil to gasoline, jet fuel, , I I I