Earlier today, Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDS.A), one of the world’s largest integrated oil and gas companies, gained approval from the Jordanian Parliament to explore oil from the country's vast shale deposits. Jordan’s top energy resources regulatory agency -- the Natural Resources Authority (NRA) -- said that lawmakers endorsed the multi-billion dollar production sharing agreement that could churn oil by thousands of barrels. In May this year, the Jordan government approved the project, under which the Anglo-Dutch company will explore and extract oil shale reserves from an area encompassing 22,000 square kilometers in the central, southern and north-western regions of the kingdom. Shell is expected to spend around $340 million on exploration, assessment and designs of the project and pay some $150 million to the Jordanian government over the three stages of the exploration, which entails the firm's patented ‘in situ conversion process,’ under which the ...