Oil shale in Jordan represents a significant resource. Oil shale deposits in Jordan underlie more than 60% of Jordanian territory. The total resources amounts to 31 billion tonnes of oil shale. The deposits include a high quality marinite oil shale of Late Cretaceous to early Cenozoic age. The most important and investigated deposits are located in west-central Jordan, where they occur at the surface and close to developed infrastructure. Although oil shale was utilized in northern Jordan prior to and during World War I, intensive exploration and studies of Jordan's oil shale resource potential started in the 1970s and 1980s, being motivated by higher oil prices, modern technology and better economic potential. As of 2008, no oil shale industry exists in Jordan, but several companies are considering both shale oil extraction and oil shale combustion for thermal power generation. Reserves Jordan has significant oil shale deposits occurring in 26 known localities. According to the World Energy Council, Jordan has 8th largest oil shale resource in the world. Geological surveys indicate that the existing deposits underlie more than 60% of Jordan's territory. The resource has been estimated to consist of 40 to 70 billion tonnes of oil shale, which may be equivalent to more than 5 million tonnes of shale oil. However, according to a report by World Energy Council in 2010, Jordan had reserves of 34,172 billion tonnes as of the end of 2008. The Jordanian government said in September 2013 that they had reserves of 31 billion tonnes. The Jordanian oil shale is a marinite of Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) to early Cenozoic era; it lies within the Muwaqqar Formation and is composed predominantly of chalk and marl. The rock is typically brown, gray, or black in color and weathers to a distinctive light bluish-gray. It is characterized by its content of light fine-grained phosphatic xenocrysts, some of which is accumulated in bone beds. An uncommon feature of Jordanian oil shale is that the included foraminiferal shells are filled with bitumen instead of the usual calcite. In general, Jordanian oil shales are of high quality, comparable to the western United States oil shale, although their sulfur content is usually higher. While the sulfur content of the most of oil shales in Jordan varies from 0.3 to 4.3%, the Jurf ed-Darawish and the Sultani deposits have sulfur content of 8 and 10% respectively. Sulfur is mostly associated with the organic matter