80 BULLETIN 102, VOL. 1, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



and even potassium is reported to be present in small amount in the 

 Colorado shale. 



While the most conspicuous oil-shale areas recorded in this coun- 

 try are in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, with the most immediate 

 interest centering around those of Colorado and Utah, other oil shales 

 are found in Nevada,^ California, Montana, Arizona, Oregon and in 

 many of the central and eastern States — aggregating an immense area 

 and representing a potential source of oil sufficient to supply this 

 country hundreds of years.^ Of course it is evident that much of 

 this shale has a prospective interest merely ; ^ but there are certain 

 beds overlying shallow coal seams, which offer themselves as pro- 

 ductive possibilities even under present conditions, as the shale is a 

 waste product to be removed anyhow in connection with the open- 

 cut mining methods coming into vogue for close-to-the-surface coal 

 seams. Thus, it is not impossible that coal-mining in the central and 

 eastern part of the country, within a very few years, may support a 

 budding shale-oil production, coming in, along with the output of 

 the western shale-oil industry, to offset the decline in petroleum 

 yield.* Still other possibilities open up in connection with the pro- 

 duction of oil, gas, and by-products from cannel coals ; ** the whole 

 matter in this wise passing over into the realm of by-product coal 

 utilization, whose possibilities have been developed in earlier pages 

 of this paper. It becomes apparent, then, that coal and oil 

 are not merely rivals, but are brothers in a common purpose — ^the 

 production of energy and chemical products. 



The presence in this country of extensive deposits of oil shale re- 

 moves the danger of early physical exhaustion in respect to oil, but it 

 does not necessarily insure a deferment of the period of economic ex- 

 haustion which is being prematurely rushed into the present by the 



^ Experimental plants are being erected In both California and Nevada. 



* The eastern shale areas are described by George H. Ashley (Oil resources of black 

 shales of the eastern United States : Bulletin 641-L, United States Geological Survey, 

 1917), who provisionally estimates that southwest Indiana alone is underlain by shale 

 sufficient to produce 100,000,000,000 barrels of oil, over fourteen times the present 

 petroleum reserve. 



* Ashley estimates that under present conditions a barrel of crude oil produced from 

 eastern shale of average quality will cost about $4.20, little more than such an oil would 

 be worth at present, barring by-product possibilities not possessed by its rival, petroleum. 



* This whole matter of by-product development is of profound significance to the 

 future of the Nation, to a degree, Indeed, difficult of appreciation by anyone who has 

 not focussed on the germs contained in the prospect. The possibilities of a shale-oil in- 

 dustry enmeshed with coal production affords promise to the already overdue arrival 

 of a significant output of coal-pyrite, a product wasted in coal production, but needed 

 for the manufacture of sulphuric acid. (See J. E. Pogue, Recovery of sulphur In Illinois 

 coals : Met. and Chem. Eng., November, 1917, pp. 584-585.) That sulphuric acid Is 

 needed both in the recovery of ammonia from oil shale and in the refining of the shale oil 

 itself is merely one example of how thoroughly by-product activities dovetail. 



5 See George H. Ashley, Cannel coals of the United States, Bulletin 659, United States 

 Geological Survey, 1918. 



