200 YEAR SUPPLY OF OIL

200 Year Supply Of Oil In One Single Shale Formation

The Green River Formation—an assemblage of over 1,000 feet of sedimentary rocks that lie beneath parts of Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado.

USGS estimates that the Green River Formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil. At the midpoint of this estimate, almost half of the 3 trillion barrels of oil would be recoverable. This is an amount about equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.

  The Green River Formation, the world’s largest oil shale deposit, is located in a largely vacant region of mostly federal land on the western edge of the Rocky Mountains that includes portions of Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado (see map).

Here’s an excerpt from testimony about the Green River Formation that was provided on Thursday by Anu K. Mittal, Government Accountability Office (GAO) Director of Natural Resources and Environment, to the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology titled “Unconventional Oil and Gas Production: Opportunities and Challenges of Oil Shale Development“: