Oil shale exploration with optical remote sensing

Oil resource is non‐renewable. Conventional oil & gas is tends to exhaustion and finding a new oil reserve has become increasingly difficult. This status encourages the search for alternative energy sources. Oil shale is considered as one of substitute sources for petroleum‐based products because of its abundant in source and the perfect oil extraction technology. Traditional oil shale exploration is mainly based on field reconnaissance, while in remote severe area, it is hard to realize. Optical remote sensing has better application effect in geology, especially for coal resource. While for its use in oil shale exploration, there is no correlation research reported. In recent years remote sensing has advanced greatly in resolution with 0.5 meter spatial resolution and 10nm spectral resolution. Theoretically, it can identify the presence of mineral on earth’s surface. In this paper, oil shale exploration with remote sensing technology is proposed. It can detect the outcrop of oil shale and acquire its area information even in three dimensional. In some stratum exposed area, the volume of oil shale can also be estimated by area and attitude information from remote sensing stereo image pair image.