Like the illusion of Wall Street, with its vast and powerful investment banks, now shuttered, China too is an illusion perpetuated by the Globalists that gave us the 15,000 mile Caesar salad, poisoned cat food and lead based paint on babies' pacifiers. Like the illusion that money would come from thin air to always push housing prices higher, China has spent a generation pursuing its illusion. Pursuing an unattainable dream to be like the West, while 6000 years of its carefully shepherded top soil blows into the sea.
Joined: Oct 12, 2005 Posts: 281 Location: Washington State, USA
Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 6:51 pm Post subject: Re: Coal-to-liquids viable or debunk?
Yes, Coal-to-liquids is a viable proven technology, and yes there are serious problems, especially water availability and environmental concerns.
CO2 is produced in massive amounts, which cannot be released to the atmosphere because of global warming, however "CO2 flooding" is currently an excellent method now in use to inject the CO2 into oil depleted oil reservoirs to sweep the last dregs of oil out of existing reservoirs for "enhanced oil recovery".
The Governor of Montana is promoting Coal to Liquids for the extensive coal beds in Montana. See the official site at:
Some of the best analysis of the mitigation options which include coal-to-liquids is the Hirsch Report ( search the forum for extensive links) and a May 2006 update posted by Monequest:
Hirsch looked at what energy technologies could be implemented now as "crash programs" to attempt to mitigate the drastic effects of the declines in cheap conventional oil which even optimists think will be within the 20 year time frame Hirsch defines as "near". The following is from the Executive Summary:
Quote:
The world is consuming more oil than it is finding, and at some point within the next decade or two, world production of conventional oil will likely peak. In addition to peaking, there are widespread concerns about the growing U.S. dependence on oil imports from both an energy security and a balance of payments standpoint.
This study considered four options that the U.S. could implement for the massive physical mitigation1 of its dependence on imported oil:
• Vehicle fuel efficiency (VFE)
• Coal liquefaction (coal to liquids or CTL)
• Oil shale
• Enhanced oil recovery (EOR)
Our objective was to better elucidate the implications of the mitigation
programs, e.g., the time required to save and produce significant quantities of liquid fuel, related costs, and economic, fiscal, and jobs impacts. We studied crash program implementation of all options simultaneously because the results provide an upper limit on what might be accomplished under the best of
circumstances. No one knows if and when such a program might be undertaken, so our calculations were based on an unspecified starting date, designated as t0. This study builds on one completed by the authors in 2005 which addressed the issue of world oil peaking.2 The current study deals exclusively with physical mitigation options for the U.S. The options analyzed in both studies are consistent and are shown in Table EX-1.
Our analysis showed that the mitigation options that we considered can contribute significantly to the saving and production of U.S. liquid fuels, although decades will be needed for significant impact (Figure EX-1) and related costs will be in the trillions of dollar range. The cumulative 20 year impacts of such a massive crash program would be:
• Savings and production of 44 billion barrels of liquid fuels
• Requirement for over $2.6 trillion of investment
• Over 10 million employment years of jobs created
• Total industry sales of over $3 trillion
• Over $125 billion of industry profits
• Over $500 billion in federal government tax revenues
• Nearly $300 billion in state and local government tax
revenues
My own thoughts are that it is probable that the world will face a serious oil shortage due to geo-political events before the longer term Peak Oil depletion really begins to bite. Just read the Iran thread on this Forum!
An oil shortage and gas lines worse than the 1970s will suddenly wake up the politicians to throwing money at the problem. Coal-to-Liquids is certain to be one of the technologies.
Even better than coal is the similar Natural Gas to liquids process. There are huge fields of natural gas in Alaska and other places, called "stranded gas" since there is no way to get it to market. Building gas-to-liquids plants and sending the liquid fuels by tanker is being done today. The South African company Sasol is expert in coal and gas to liquids plants and just started up a gas-to-liquids plant in Qatar:
Bottom line however, all these mitigation efforts will prove nothing but delaying actions to the inevitable end of the petroleum age.
As Hirsch concludes ( which Monetquest also quotes in the Peak Oil link above):
Quote:
It is important to note that initiation of all of the options simultaneously does not even satisfy half of the U.S. liquid fuels requirements prior to 2025. If the peaking of world conventional oil production occurs before 2025, the U.S. may not have a choice in terms of a massive national physical mitigation program. Even with the most optimistic assumptions and assuming crash program implementation, physical mitigation will require decades and trillions of dollars of investment to make substantial contributions.
_________________ An expert is someone who has made every mistake possible in their field and learned how to prevent them.
Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 7:43 pm Post subject: Re: Coal-to-liquids viable or debunk?
trying to keep this economics related.
Remember when all the "experts" swore on a stack of bibles saying oil can never be sustained above $40 because if it ever did then we'd ramp up tar sands production and that will bring the price of crude down?
the last time I checked crude was well above $70.
So here's a question? If tar sands are being used right now then why is oil still so high? The answer is simple. Scalability
You can't spit out 9 mbpd like Saudi Arabia using oil sands. If Alberta, Canada could do that then yes, oil would probably drop to below $40. But realistically speaking these "unconventional" sources of oil "including CTL" will only be enough to replace the production drops from mature "conventional" oil fields...if even that.
Joined: Mar 28, 2005 Posts: 399 Location: Northern California, USA
Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2006 1:03 am Post subject: Re: Coal-to-liquids viable or debunk?
cube wrote:
trying to keep this economics related.
Remember when all the "experts" swore on a stack of bibles saying oil can never be sustained above $40 because if it ever did then we'd ramp up tar sands production and that will bring the price of crude down?
the last time I checked crude was well above $70.
So here's a question? If tar sands are being used right now then why is oil still so high? The answer is simple. Scalability
You can't spit out 9 mbpd like Saudi Arabia using oil sands. If Alberta, Canada could do that then yes, oil would probably drop to below $40. But realistically speaking these "unconventional" sources of oil "including CTL" will only be enough to replace the production drops from mature "conventional" oil fields...if even that.
Scalability... Otherwise known as diminishing marginal returns... The biggest lie in economics is the money illusion that unlimited amounts of money flowing around can be utilized to a mathematically optimial degree for any particular purpose. Money is not electricity. It's just a way of persuading people to use their posessions and expertise to organize themselves toward certain goals.
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