Twenty-third oil shale symposium proceedings

Abstract

The following is a partial foreward by James H. Gary, Director of Symposia and Professor of Chemical Engineering and Petroleum Refining: The 23rd Oil Shale Symposium was made possible by the support of the U.S. Department of Energy and those authors and their companies who provided the papers and made the presentations at the Symposium. Although there were fewer papers than in the past years, the quality of the presentations was excellent and the material covered was very valuable to those attending. The attendance was better than that for the 22nd Oil Shale Symposium even though there has been no renewal of interest in alternate liquid fuels by the U.S. The United States has become increasingly dependent upon imported crude oils and, during 1989, imports averaged over 46% of the total crude demand. Also, U.S. crude oil reserves fell for the 19th straight year. In spite of these trends, the low prices and easy availability of crude oils have prevented the reawakening of interest for a synthetic fuels program and the reopening of research and development programs in the fuels and energy industry.