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 oil-shale studies by the US Bureau of Mines. The Bureau of Mines built a test facility at Anvil Points on Naval Oil Shale Reserve 1, to test methods of mining, crushing, and retorting the Green River oil shales. It started to develop the gas combustion retort process. In 1943 Mobil Oil built a pilot shale oil extraction plant and in 1944 Union built an experimental oil shale retort. In 1945 Texaco started shale oil refining study. In 1951, the United States Department of Defense became interested in oil shale as an alternative resource for producing a jet fuel. The United