This book looks at developments in oil shale which is the largest untapped domestic resource with the greatest potential to decrease our dependence on foreign oil. Over 70% of the world‘s oil shale resources occur in the United States. These deposits contain over 1.5 trillion barrels of shale oil. If only 800 billion of this can be recovered, that alone would supply all of our current domestic petroleum needs for the next 100 years or more. The 2005 Energy Security Act demonstrated that the US government might finally encourage the development of these valuable oil shale resources. The nation‘s production of crude oil has been declining since the 1970s while its demand has continued to increase, making the country increasingly dependent on imported oil. However, there are lingering questions about our ability to produce shale oil in this country. Most of these questions discussed in this book, center on key issues such as: (1) is the technology available and will it work on a large scale?; (2) can shale oil be produced profitably?; (3) can shale oil be produced in an environmentally responsible manner?; and (4) what are the socio-economic impacts going to be on the local regions where these developments occur? Oil shale requires an expensive, high-risk, long-lead-time development program and the federal government controls most of the resource. They will therefore ultimately determine whether or not shale oil is ever produced at a level sufficient to improve our economic and national security. <...>

The publication of any new book on drilling engineering provides a welcome addition to the inventory of availableinformation on the subject. This book contains a presentation of the fundamental principles of drilling engineering. The theory behind the operation of a rig and the design of an oilwelliswellknown to those directly involved but has rarely been recorded so comprehensively. This accumulation of basic information will both guide the training of new engineers and offer help to those working in the field <...>

When computers were frst invented in the middle of the last century, nobody ever anticipated that the instruction sets to program them would ultimately evolve to the point where many of them could be accessed freely, without charge, in ways that would become widely available to nonexpert communities. Nor did we ever consider that computers would penetrate every corner of social life, revolutionizing our social behavior, our science, and our politics.

This paper describes some mitigation/remedial measures used in Chilean open pit engineering practice to deal with some common pit slope problems. These measures include the use of controlled blasting techniques, slope depressurization and pit dewatering, use of retaining dikes, buttresses and removal of material in unstable slopes, and the filling of pre-existing underground excavations and surface craters.  <...>