History of the oil shale industry in the United States Act of 1985 which among other things abolished the United States' Synthetic Liquid Fuels Program. Union finally bowed to continued low oil prices and closed the project in 1991, rather than complete the US$2 billion project. Over several decades, some of the world's largest oil companies (Amoco, Arco, Chevron, Exxon, Gulf, Phillips, Shell, Sohio, Sunoco, Texaco, Union Oil) had spent billions of dollars to start an oil shale industry in the Green River Formation, the world's largest oil shale resource. But in the end, cheap petroleum prices drove oil shale out of business. Even after the oil shale bust, some
Oil shale in Serbia sapropel type (Aleksinac, Mionica and Petnica) and sapropel-coaly type. Although oil shale was known in Serbia for centuries, a more detailed exploration started in 1980s. The Southern Serbia region, covering an area equal to around 30% of the country and containing oil shales of Upper Devonian to Lower Carboniferous age, was extensively studied during the 1980s, while the smaller deposits in the other parts of the country were found to be of negligible economic value. Within the region, two potentially exploitable large deposits, Aleksinac and Vina-Zubetin, have been identified, estimated to contain 2 and 0.85 billion tonnes of oil shale