"The chemical characterization of shale oil is important in planning for its potential use as an energy or as a chemical source. The polar materials in shale oil are of particular interest because they cause problems in refining and also in themselves form a potential source of chemical raw materials. The naphtha fraction of a shale oil has best described in detail (1), but it is a small part of the crude oil. The nitrogen compounds in a heavy distillate have been characterized In terms of model compounds (2) . The composition of the light distillate, which is not readily interpolated from these two fractions, has not been reported before. In a closely related area, detailed compositional studies of the nitrogen and oxygen compound types in petroleum have been reported by Snyder, et.al. (3-7). The objective of this investigation was to characterize the nitrogen-type compounds in a shale-oil light distillate (190'-310'C). The light distillate comprises 15% of the crude shale oil and has as much as 20% nitrogen-containing compounds. Over 90% of the nitrogen In the light distillate is titratable as either weak bases (PKa = 2 to 8) or as very weak bases (PKa = -2 to 2). Cat1on-exchange fractionation was used as a separative tool to fractionate a weak-base fraction and four very weak-base fractions from the light distillate. These fractions were examined using titrations and various specific chemical and spectrometric methods to determine the nitrogen types in each fraction."