The Timahdit oil shale deposit is an oil shale deposit located about 240 kilometres (150 mi) southeast of Rabat near Timahdite, Fès-Meknès, Morocco. It is the second largest oil-shale deposit in Morocco.[1][2]Geologically, it comprises two basins: El koubbat and Angueursynclines.[3] The oil shale formation is about 70 kilometres (43 mi) long and 4 to 10 kilometres (2.5 to 6.2 mi) wide. The volume of the El koubbat syncline formation is about 250 square kilometres (97 sq mi); the Angueur syncline area is about 100 square kilometres (39 sq mi).[3][4]
The deposit is estimated to consist of 42 billion tons of oil shale, containing 16.1 billion barrels (2.56×10^9 m3) of shale oil.[1] The oil shale formation's thickness varies from 80 to 250 metres (260 to 820 ft).[3][4] Its moisture content is 6–11% and sulfur content is about 2%. On average it yields 70 litres (15 imp gal; 18 US gal) of shale oil per one ton of oil shale.[4] As the Timahdit deposit is located near Ifrane National Park and Haut-Atlas Oriental National Park, oil extraction is an environmentally sensitive issue.[5]
The Timahdit deposit was discovered during the 1960s.[6] The deposit was researched and tested during the 1970s and 1980s.[1] The Moroccan Office of Hydrocarbons and Mining (ONHYM) developed and tested a shale oil extraction process called T3 which in 1984–1986 produced approximately 400 tons of shale oil at Timahdit.[7]
