The Piceance Basin contains one of the thickest and richest oil shale deposits in the world and is the focus of most on-going oil shale research and development extraction projects in the U.S. The Piceance Basin has an estimated 1.525 trillion barrels of in-place oil shale resources. This study also found an estimated 43.3 billion tons of in-place nahcolite resources in the Piceance Basin. This mineral is embedded with oil shale in many areas, and produces large quantities of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide when heated in oil shale processing. Oil resources can only be obtained from oil shale rock when heated to great temperatures, 530 to 930 degrees Fahrenheit. These temperatures are required because oil shale does not contain crude oil but instead contains kerogen, which is an organic precursor to oil that must be heated for oil production.
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