Bituminous sands, extra-heavy oil and oil shale in great quantities exist worldwide. The technologies that have been developed and used for extraction and upgrading of bitumen and extra-heavy oil have enabled their profitable sale on the oil market. It is expected that their worldwide production will increase from 80 Mt in the year 2003 to 200 Mt in the year 2010. Extraction and utilization of oil shale for electricity generation or synthetic crude oil production are mostly unprofitable or do not comply with an advanced hazardous waste legislation. Therefore, their large utilization is not likely in the next decades.