.. BackgroundMineralresources and synthetic fuels will always be needed by modernsocieties: without them, declines in the standards of living andeconomic strengths of countries will ensue. The present totaldependence of several countries, like Jordan, upon foreign sources ofcrude oil, refined products therefrom as well as natural gas, with theattendant imbalances of payments, could be eliminated for severalhundred years by the production of synthetic fuels and electricity fromtheir indigenous oil-shale beds. In general, the vast deposits of oilshale, which have been found on all the inhabited continents, have asyet not been harnessed effectively, because of the apparentunattractive financial feasibilities of doing so.[, , , ]The main reasons for this are that the majority of deposits are lean orof low grade i.e. the organic-matter content is, on average, in therange of â??% by weight and located in remote regions, where at bestonly a limited industrial infrastructure exists. Moreover, theprevailing relatively low unit prices for crude oil on theinternational market have discouraged entrepreneurs from makinginvestments to utilise this vast oil-shale resource.However,there are two technologies presently available for harnessing theenergy from oil-shale deposits. The more common one is retorting theshales to produce synthetic fuels. The other is the direct combustionof the shale in order to release heat and thence generate electricity.But the utilisation of oil shale as an indigenous energy resource, byemploying these techniques, will not soon become competitive even inJordan with its vast oil shale deposits and huge annualbalance-of-payments deficit for imported crude-oil and petroleumproducts without a significant governmental kick-start. However, thecombination of simultaneous electricity and fuel production in parallelas well as the recovery of sulphur and some of the valuable metals,which have strategic significances in the international market fromoil shale possesses the potential for making oil-shale utilisationfinancially viable. In the present study, a new approach has beenassessed namely using an integrated tri-generation system, whichproduces gaseous and liquid fuels as well as electricity, under variouspertinent conditions.