52 
BULLETIN 102, 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 , 1 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 . 2 Of course it is evident that much of 
this shale has a prospective interest merely ; 3 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 . 4 Still other possibilities open up in connection with the pro- 
duction of oil, gas, and by-products from cannel coals ; 5 the whole 
matter in this wise passing over into the realm of by-product coal 
utilization, whose possibilities have been developed in an earlier 
paper of this series . 6 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 
1 Experimental plants are being erected in both California and Nevada. 
2 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. 
3 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. 
4 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 059, United States 
Geological Survey, 1918. 
0 Bulletin 102, part 4, Coal : The resource and its full utilization. 
