Oil Shale | Why Consider Shale Oil?

For comparison, the Alberta Department of Energy estimates that the Athabasca oil sands contain 1.7 trillion barrels of oil, of which 174 billion barrels are considered proven reserves that can be recovered using current technology. Over one million barrels per day of bitumen are currently being produced from the Alberta oil sands.

The World Energy Council has prepared a 2004 survey of the shale oil potential of member countries. A summary of that survey is shown below. Many other deposits have not been fully explored, so the full extent of the deposits is unknown.