ACS PressPac -- Sept. 17, 2008( News Items in This Edition: New ...)

News Items in This Edition:

• New hope for tapping vast domestic reserves of oil shale
• Calorie-free natural sweetener moves one step closer to use in the U. S.
• Toward a fast, life-saving test for identifying the purity of heroin
• Key proteins identified in the quest for male contraceptive
• Toward more effective drugs, vaccines for fighting HIV

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ARTICLE #1 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New hope for tapping vast domestic reserves of oil shale
Energy & Fuels

Researchers in Canada and Turkey report discovery of a new process for economically tapping vast resources of crude oil in the United States, Canada, and other countries now locked away in rocky deposits called oil shale. The process could boost worldwide oil supplies in the future and lead to lower prices for gasoline, diesel, and home heating oil, the researchers suggest. Their study is scheduled for the November 19 issue of ACS' Energy & Fuels, a bi-monthly journal.

In the study, Tayfun Babadagli and colleagues point out that oil trapped in the world's oil shale deposits exceeds the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia. An estimated one trillion barrels of oil, for instance, are in the so-called Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. However, existing technology for recovering that oil, termed pyrolysis, is uneconomical because it requires high temperatures (about 900 degrees F.) and large energy inputs, but yields little usable oil.'/>"/>