I was reading an article the other day about a proven technology for making a synthetic crude oil for 15 to 25 dollars a barrell, using technology that was proven in the 1940s and has been in use in South Africa since the 1950s, China is building 2 plants for the process that combined will produce 400,000 barrels of syn crude a year. In the process they use coal to make the syn crude, there are two things holding up building any plants here, the greenies and the fear that the foriegn oil companies will drop there price per barrell to protect their sales to one of their largest customers. From what I understood from the article the air force has put out requists for bids to build one at there base in Montana. The greenies are fighting it complaining about the release of co2, but as part of the process the different gases from heating the coal are seperated and the co2 can be captured, also heating the coal will not create near the amount of co2 as burning it will.

 

400,000 wow, a year wow, wait we import 10 mil barrels a day lol. so you got to wonder sure its synthetic but do we have the resources to mass produce it, i think the best alt right now would be a cutting agent to work like 50/50, kinda like heroin and mannitol lol.

 

That 400,000 is with just 2 plants, with the coal reserve that is in this country alone we could replace half of the imported oil for the next 250 years

 

still 2 plants = 400,000 a year, we use
3,650,000,000 a year,
so they would need over 9,000 plants to produce. its good that they are starting to look for alr and syns though.

Heres the scary truth, if we do not find an alt energy source and free ourselves from oil we face a great risk of war, once the oil reserves start going dry we will attack and be attacked for oil, we will defend and conquer existing oil fields for our nation. Russia, China, Japan, Germany, England.... it doesnt matter they will do what it takes to continue getting their oil as we will ours.

Now for the financial impact of a huge swing towards hybrid and all electric cars and the cost it will bring upon this nation..... lets test this theory....
keeping math simple, lets say oil is sold at $100 a barrel, and OPEC sells 20 barrels a day = $2,000, now demand dwindles due to so many people having hybrid cars and electric cars that they only sell 12 barrels a day, well boys and girls your economics teacher that always said when theres great demand the price goes up and when theres less of a demand price goes down, they were wrong. in this case OPEC realizes that theyre going from $2,000 a day to $1,200 a day, well they know if they lower oil price it wont increase demand as demand is just not what it was before due to new technology, but realizes that certain aspects of our life still require oil, so lets jack up the price to $166 a barrel to bring them back to 2,000 a day, then demand will drop to 10 barrels a day as this will drastically reduce the remaining gassers from casual driving, thus making opec increase to $200 a barrel to still equal $2,000 a day. Home heating oil in the northern states will become a huge financial strain. The trucking industry would see their profits shrink to almost nothing and then they would charge the companies they deliver to a lot more per load thus increasing our cost at the check out line, not to mention the increase cost of harvesting crops. And then us truck lovers that even with a diesel or hybrid were still seeing 20-25 mpg at 6-8 bucks a gallon.

And for the people that say we are already at war for oil in iraq, thats not a war, its a skirmish, a conflict at best, we just passed 4,000 KIA. That compared to when countries go to war to get needed oil, 4,000 will be a bad day. Look at wars past, http://www.geocities.com/rbackstr2000/dead/dead.htm (list of over 5,000 marines killed during the taking of iwo jima) and as far as civilian casualties, the days of people complaining that a bomb missed its mark and killed several civilians will be far gone, look at the dresden fire bombing duringn wwii, est range from 35,000-80,000 civilian dead in one night.

 

I was wrong on the price, it is quoted in the article[/align][/align]"South Africa has been producing coal-derived fuels since 1955 and has the only commercial coal to liquids (CTL) industry in operation today. Currently around 30% of the country’s gasoline and diesel needs are produced from indigenous coal. The total capacity of the South African CTL operations now stands in excess of 160,000bbl/d.[/align]




There are two different methods for converting coal into liquid fuels, direct and indirect liquefaction.[/align][ul][*]Direct liquefaction works by dissolving the coal in a solvent at high temperature and pressure. This process is highly efficient, but the liquid products require further refining to achieve high grade fuel characteristics.[*]Indirect liquefaction gasifies the coal to form a ‘syngas’ (a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide). The syngas is then condensed over a catalyst – the ‘Fischer-Tropsch’ process – to produce high quality, ultra-clean products. [/ul]
An array of products can be made via these processes – ultra-clean petroleum and diesel, synthetic waxes, lubricants, chemical feedstocks as well as alternative liquid fuels such as methanol and dimethyl ether (DME).[/align][/align]Investment[/align]The increase in oil price, growth in demand for liquid fuels, and energy security concerns is leading to rapid development of CTL industries in several countries around the world.[/align][/align]The low price of coal compared to other fuels is a major driver and has generated significant interest in CTL fuels worldwide. Studies suggest liquid fuels can be produced from coal at around $27 to $45/bbl; well bellow 2006 oil prices which reached almost $80/bbl in 2006.[/align][/align]CTL plant is cheaper to build than most other alternative fuel plants but more costly than a conventional oil refinery."[/align][/align]http://www.worldcoal.org/pages/conte...asp?PageID=423[/align]

 

yeah 160,000 barrels a day sounds better lol

as for the liquified coal, the germans did that in wwii for their airplanes.

 

im up for anything that will lower fuel prices! y can't we just run all of the tree huggers over and blow a bunch of black smoke right in their faces?

 

Ramitone about all the firebombings and stuff in world war two. the only reason why people care about 3 civilians dieing because of an accident is becuase the media is every where. nothing gets away from it. and people arnt critical about the news, they hear a story and take it for the truth.

 

I saw the same thing on discovery channel, all well and good, butwhat do you think will happen to the cost of coal if and when demand goes up. Another thing, most of the coal in this country is delivered by rail, the railroads today are operating at or near max capacity. Gloom and doom answer, (cheap?) fuel is a thing of the past. But on the same subject, according to economicstatistics we are paying a smaller percentage of total income for cost of fuel than in 1987. Like that makes it feel better...and of course thats lumping everyone into the same economicincomepercentage pot.I also read that we get a larger percentage of oil from Canada and not as much from the middle east (Saudia Arabia) as most people think, thatonly a couple large oil companies in U.S. buy middle eastern oil. Don't know how much truth there is to that. I'd be curious to know those facts though..

 

hey finny that is a big reason, I wonder how we would have reacted if we saw the normandy landing live or delayed and back then the bw tv didn't show the red ocean.

I watched a prog on the history channel where they said if you took the area = 10% of Nevada and put solar powered plants or wind power it could power the whole US. If that's really the case why the hell are we still burning coal????
btw you don't need much sunlight to be effective, Germany has the most succesful solar power program and they get less sunshine than Seattle.

Yeah Canada has an immense amount of oil in their country so theyd be our first target, we have more gun owners here in Texas than the entire Canadian military. LOL.