Oil yield and uranium content of black shales

Geology of uranium in coaly carbonaceous rocks

“…From the viewpoint of the geochemical cycle of uranium in sedimentary rocks, carbonaceous or phosphatic marine shale and coaly carbonaceous rocks complement each other. During periods of erosion, uranium that is made soluble and introduced into surface waters such as streams tends to be transported to sea and concentrated in carbonaceous marine mud, probably largely in that rich in humic as compared with sapropelic matter (Swanson, 1960) or in phosphate-rich sediment. Soluble uranium introduced to ground water either from thermal water with an igneous source or from alteration of the local sedimentary rocks (for example, devitrification of tuffaceous material) is generally deposited either in sandstone or coaly carbonaceous rocks.…”

Organic-rich shale of the United States and world land areas

“…About 3 percent of the sampled shale beds yielded more than 25 gallons per ton, 26 percent yielded 10 25 gallons, and 25 percent yielded 5 10 gallons. Runnels, Kulstad, McDuffee, and Schleicher (1952) and Swanson (1960) reported that several shale units in Kansas, which were from 2 10 feet thick, yielded 5 12 gallons of oil per ton. These units were estimated by Runnels to contain an oil equivalent of about 3 billion barrels in rocks less than 100 feet below surface.…”

“…Previous summaries of world resources of oil shale include reports by the Great Britain Mineral Resource Bureau (1924), proceedings of two conferences on oil shale and cannel coal published by The Institute of Petroleum (1938), Cadman (1948, Guthrie and Thorne (1954), Jaffe (1962), and Thorne, Stanfield, Dinneen, and Murphy (1962). Summaries covering parts of oil shale and black shale resources of the United States include reports by Winchester (1923Winchester ( , 1928, U.S. Bureau of Mines (1960), U.S. Geological Survey (1951), Rubel (1955), Duncan (1958), Swanson (1960), andShultz (1962).…”

“…Some sampled sections of the deposits in a 600-square-mile area in southwestern Montana ( fig. 2) yield 10 15 gallons of oil per ton (Bentley, 1963, p. 45;Swanson, 1960) and indicate that part of the deposits contain an order of magnitude of 5 10 billion barrels oil equivalent. The shale oil potentials of these deposits are not shown separately but are included with other unappraised deposits in table 2.…”

“…The resource estimates of this report revised in part on modern analytical data (Swanson, 1960;Hoover, 1960;Lucas, 1953;Breger and Brown, 1962;Smith and Stanfield, 1964) include deposits in Michigan and Texas not included in previous estimates and include deposits projected to depths as much as several thousand feet in some areas.…”