Oil shale was liquefied in supercritical ethanol in an autoclave. The effects of reaction temperature and residence time on the liquefaction of oil shale were studied. The optimum conditions for liquefaction were 360 degrees C and 210 min, which gave a shale oil yield of 18.15 wt%. According to Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and gas chromatographymass spectrometry analysis (GS-MS), the main components of shale oil were alkanes and alcohols, accounting for about 39% of the total. Shale oil exhibited a high heating value of 37.72 MJ/kg with a water content of 0.4 wt% and a total acid number of 77.0 mg KOH/g oil.