McKittrick Oil Field the Teapot Dome Scandal of the Warren G. Harding administration; adjacent to the southwest is the Belgian Anticline Oil Field, along Route 58; and to the southeast is the huge Midway-Sunset Oil Field, the third largest oil field in the United States. The total productive area of the field is . The field is about long on the southeast to northwest axis, and about across. The predominant geologic feature, and the one that makes the McKittrick field distinctive, is the presence of a huge block of Monterey shale – more than long, approximately wide, and up to thick – which
History of the oil shale industry in the United States but lagged farther behind consumption, and net imports of crude oil to the US rose sharply, from 18 million barrels in 1915 to 106 million barrels in 1920. The nation's largest oil shale resource, Green River Formation, was accidentally discovered in 1874. That beds of the Green River Formation could yield oil upon heating had been known for years, but the publication in 1914 of US Geological Survey Bulletin 581, "Oil-Shale in Northwestern Colorado and Northeastern Utah" brought the enormous size of the resource to public attention. Concerned that a coming oil famine could strand the American fleet, in 1912