ABSTRACT
The only practical method presently available for recovering oil from oil shale is heating the shale to temperatures high enough to decompose kerogen--yielding shale oil, gas, and residue. Oil shale Is much harder than coal; its deposits, or seams, are also generally much thicker than coal seams. Consequently, an oil shale surface mine is more like a limestone quarry or an open-pit copper mine than a coal strip mine. Water is a major consideration in mining oil shale. First, as the shale is taken from the ground, ground waters may seep into the mine. One of the prime objectives of mining design is to minimize surface disturbance. In open pit mining this can be done with the single-pass open-pit mining technique. The most well-developed mining technology for oil shale recovery is the room and pillar technique, a method also used in underground coal mining.
