Oil shales and tar sands

Abstract

The exploitation of oil shale as a fuel and a source of liquid hydrocarbons on a substantial scale expends over a period of nearly 150 years. At the beginning^ of this century, oil shale industries were established in such countries as UK, France, Sweden, Germany, Spain, USSR and later in South Africa, Australia and China.

Many of the oil shale plants were closed due to competition from crude petroleum but .in almost all cases shales oil plants have been built as a result of scarcity of liquid fuel. Currently, the only large scale oil shales operations are those in the USSR and China„

Production in the USSR is about 35 million metric tons of scales per annum, the main part of which is produced from the Estonian deposits, Two-thirds of the oil shales is used directly as fuel for electric power generation, the remainder for petrochemicals and gas.