Up in the mountains along both sides of Parachute Creek the Exxon Corporation and other companies have begun to pour billions of dollars into two huge projects to turn the nation's immense reserves of oil shale into shale oil.

Can you imagine squeezing oil from rock? Oil shale is different from the shale gas that is extracted through fracking. It is geologically un-evolved oil: the remnants of organic matter buried underground for millions of years but never sunk deep enough, nor long enough, to be transformed into petroleum.

Oil shale

Meaning

Noun