extracting from oil shales

Seems Shell has developed a feasible method for getting useful hydrocarbons out of oil shales, without diggin' 'em up and using extreme quantities of water to process them. A good potential alternative to conventional production, just like the oil sands in Canada. Will this really affect oil prices? I dunno...I'm going to venture a "No", but it will reduce our dependency on foreign oil and perhaps let ANWAR be for now.

But what this really points to, for me, is the important of industry-driven research, done within the industry rather than being farmed out to academia.