Talk:Oil shale reserves

Maps

Would we be ok copying the maps from the USGS/DOE reports witht he reserves locations and putting them here if the USGS/DOE themselves have takent hem from another source. was thinking it would be quite good to put a gallery of sorts or something liek that at the bottom Philbentley 13:57, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the US maps are public domain, and can be put into WP with no reservations.

Clarification

Re: Significant oil shale deposits are located in Jordan (5,242 million tonnes of shale oil or 65 billion tonnes of oil shale) and Israel (550 million tonnes of shale oil or 6.5 billion tonnes of oil shale). Should we just use million tonnes, since that is un-ambiguous as a measure? Novickas 15:58, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Excellent idea! Humphnose, 213.102.106.3 (talk) 08:18, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that oil shales vary largely by their composition and the quantity of organic matter onsisted in the rock. That means that the same amount of different oil shales yields a different amount of oil. Therefore there is no direct link between the amount of oil shale and yielded oil. More recent sources reports it mainly by the amount of oil in place. Beagel (talk) 17:30, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm a complete layman on the subject, and I find that the constant variation between barrels, metric tonnes and cubic metres means I come out of this entire article none the wiser, in terms of quantity. It's only useful to me by the descriptive ranking. Ondofpond (talk) 07:22, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Error?

US oil shale reserves are 381 billion metric metric tons or 2.6 trillion barrels according to the table in the article, yet below the table it is cited as 3.3 trillion metric tons. There must be an error in one of the numbers or sources. I think the table seems roughly correct after checking the sources briefly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.219.30.132 (talk) 14:50, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

 Done This mistake originates from the original Oil shale before spinning-off this article and was inserted in August 2006. During almost four years you re the first person finding it. Thank you. Beagel (talk) 15:12, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Update on China

It seems China has now far more observed Oil Shale reserves than USA. Should someone review the data in the text?http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/07/china-has-catalyst-to-convert-shale-oil.html Daniel de França (talk) 16:54, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

"about 500,000 billion tons" is certainly mistake. China's oil shale resource may exceed the US resource (it is estimation, not proved), but reserves at the moment are definitely smaller than in the U.S. The World Energy Council will publish at the end of this year a new overview and they will give also update data on oil shake (including oil shale in China). I propose to wait and to change accordingly to WEC's overview. Beagel (talk) 18:17, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

An update on reserves would be most welcome, since those in this article appear to be around 4 years old! In an actively explored commodity, this is far too long. yoyo (talk) 18:40, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

The Chinese figures are not increased by the WEC, although at the same time the US figures are. There is still a report by Caroll but it seems that no other sources are ready to confirm them. And oil shale is not actually so actively explored, so 10 years old estimates could be still be quite up-to-date. Beagel (talk) 17:35, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Name change?

Reserves are, by definition, economically recoverable. By this criterion, little, if any, oil shale qualifies as reserves. Thus, this article is not about reserves, but resources, and the proper name should be "Oil shale resources". Plazak (talk) 13:44, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree 100%. Was just getting ready to write the same thing. The article is misnamed. The word reserves is used one less time than resources in the article. At a minimum it should be renamed to Oil_share_resources_and_reserves. The United States has the biggest oil shale resources in the world and none of it is being developed. None of it is a reserve. Does the rest of the world know something about developing oil shale that the United States doesn't? Wickorama (talk) 13:43, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Numbers are inconsistent?

• "with the largest reserves in the United States, which is thought to have 1.5–2.6 trillion barrels"
• in table "Largest oil shale deposits (over 1 billion metric tons)" 3 top US deposits sum up to 4.2 trillions
• table "Shale oil: resources and production at end-2005..." states 2 trillions barresls in US — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.161.122.76 (talk) 10:45, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

That's true that estimations of the American resource have changed over the time. I hope that now it is better understandable. Beagel (talk) 18:03, 11 June 2017 (UTC)