It is generally agreed that the world's energy needs are now doubling every 20 years. Within 10 to 15 years, this rate of increase should create a wide enough gap between crude oil supply and demand to enable other sources of energy to enter our economy on a competitive basis. Without question, new energy sources, such as nuclear, will fill a good portion of this gap. However, there should be a sufficient increase in demand for liquid fuels in the transportation field (vehicles, airplanes, trains), to provide new opportunities for the fossil fuels (coal, tar sands and oil shale)
As a part of this program, I have been asked to sum up the situation in regard to the development of oil shale as a contender in the race to supply synthetic fuels. One of the world's richest deposits of oil shale occurs in the Green River Formation, as shown in the attached Figure 1, in the tri-state area where Colorado, Utah and Wyoming meet. The Green River Formation encompasses an area of 16,500 square miles and contains the world's single, largest hydrocarbon deposit with 1 1/2 trillion barrels of known reserves.