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7459350 
Book/Book Chapter 
Chapter 11 - Origin and properties of oil shale 
Speight, J 
2020 
Gulf Professional Publishing 
Shale Oil and Gas Production Processes 
671-714 
Oil shale represents a large and mostly untapped hydrocarbon resource. Like tar sand (oil sand in Canada) and coal, oil shale is considered unconventional because oil cannot be produced directly from the resource by sinking a well and pumping. Oil has to be produced thermally from the shale. The organic material contained in the shale is called kerogen, a solid material intimately bound within the mineral matrix. However, oil shale does not contain any oil – this must be produced by a process in which the kerogen is thermally decomposed (cracked) to produce the liquid product (shale oil). Thus any estimates of shale oil reserves can only be based on speculative estimates from application of the Fischer assay test method to (often) non-representative samples taken from an oil shale deposit and the assay data (in terms of oil yield in gallons per ton) must not to be taken as proven reserves. 
Origin; Terrestrial oil shale; Lacustrine oil shale; Marine oil shale; Composition and properties; Mineral components 
Speight, James