A possible way shale oil could developed would be to mine the oil shale and transport it by rail to a location where there are available water resources. The Great Lakes area, probably the Chicago-Northern Indiana area, is the most likely possibility.

This is not as implausible as it seem at first since the Northeast is also a large oil market, eliminating the need for further transportation of the product. This area also has huge tracts on heavy industrial land right on the shore of Lake Michigan.

Roughly, a cubic yard of shale could be expected to produce about a barrel of oil. A dig of one mile square by 100 feet deep would, by this estimate, produce about 100 million barrels a year. One-tenth of a cubic miles a year is not exactly tearing up the Rockies.

Even so, I don't think that oil shale is major answer.