A comparison of the proposed American oil shale industry to the Alberta oil-sands industry has been drawn (the latter enterprise generated over of oil in late 2007), stating that "the first-generation facility is the hardest, both technically and economically" [REF].
The RAND Corporation assumes that the development of processing plant in the United States will take 12 years, while to achieve the level of will take at least 20 years and around 30 years [REF].