"The major interest in oil shale development within the United States, thus far, has focused on the oil shales In the Green River Formation In Colorado, Utah and Wyoming . However, a substantial portion (nearly 25 ,000 square miles) of the Eastern United States is underlain by the Devonian Black Shales, and in principle, represents a sizeable potential resource. These shales, however, yield only less than one-half as much liquids upon heating as do the Green River Formation oil shales, because of the lesser hydrogen contents of the Devonian shales. Therefore, processes to extract liquids or improve recovery ratios from the Devonian shales must necessarily deal with special retorting techniques for hydrogen deficient materials. One such candidate process is the Institute of Gas Technology 's Hytort process, which retorts oil shale under hydrogen pressure with the result that oil yields of Devonian shales are increased 2.5 times over those obtained by the standard Fischer assay . Characterization of the Eastern and Western oils that are produced by the IGT and Fischer assay processes would be beneficial toward: a) assessing the quality of the product oils , c) understanding the retort process and c) providing information or optimizing the process."