Shale Oil is black or dark brown shale containing hydrocarbons that yield petroleum by distillation. It is a potentially valuable fossil fuel, but the present methods of mining and refining it are expensive, damage the land, pollute the water, and produce carcinogenic wastes. Thus, oil shale will probably not be exploited on a wide scale until other petroleum resources have been nearly depleted. America’s oil shale reserves are enormous, totaling at least 1.5 trillion barrels of oil (five times the reserves of Saudi Arabia) but no one is producing commercial quantities of oil from these vast deposits. Estonia, China, and Brazil have facilities for producing relatively limited quantities, and the U.S. government operates an experimental plant in Colorado.
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Murakami
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