Water for commercial oil shale development in Utah: Allocating scarce resources and the search for new sources of supply

BACKGROUND A. What Is Oil Shale and Why Do We Care? Oil shale is a sedimentary rock containing solid bituminous materials. When oil shale is heated, petroleum-like liquids and gasses are released. The process of heating shale and capturing resulting liquids and gasses is called retorting and can occur in combination with conventional mining methods (surface retorting), or by in-place liquification and gasification (in-situ retorting).