Torbanite, also known historically as boghead coal or kerosene shale, is a variety of fine-grained black oil shale. It usually occurs as lenticular masses, often associated with deposits of Permian .[
] A similar mineral, cannel coal, is classified as being a terrestrial form of oil shale, not a lacustrine type.
Torbanite is named after Torbane Hill near Bathgate in West Lothian, Scotland, a major location of occurrence.
Other major deposits of torbanite are found in Pennsylvania and Illinois, US, in Mpumalanga Province in South Africa, in the Sydney Basin of New South Wales, Australia,
Organic matter (telalginite) in torbanite is derived from lipid-rich microscopic plant remains similar in appearance to the fresh-water colonial green algae Botryococcus braunii.[ This evidence and extracellular produced by the alga have led scientists to examine the alga as a source of Permian torbanites][
] and a possible producer of .[
]
Torbanite typically comprises 88% carbon and 11% hydrogen.[ Kerosene can be distilled from some forms of torbanite, a process discovered and by James Young in 1851.]
A rubber-like, elastic, highly-resilient bituminous substance, known as coorongite—classified as an organic-rich sediment and named after the Coorong, a lagoon in South Australia where it was found—was in 1925 identified as a "peat stage" in the formation of torbanite, which suggested the lacustrine and Algae origin of torbanite.
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