Posted on 05/03/2012 12:51:07 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The Greenies are gonna get delirious with anger at Obama....for letting this happen.
Now we just need a process to convert methane to butanol
With gas from methane hydrates added to shale and natural gas, ....thousand years ...supply?
I’m gonna guess that this will require a new pipeline (and hence the wedge for the greenies)?
The environmentalists have a hatred of man call into question the value of economic progress in the first place.
Better yet, diesel and kerosene.
Proven technology, at least two large (commercial) sized facilities. It is only a matter of economics and regulations, not a theoretical technology.
Shell: world’s biggest gas-to-liquids plant to start soon
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2731066/posts
Jun 7, 2011
That plant is now up and running and shipping tankers to Europe.
http://www.shell.com/home/content/aboutshell/our_strategy/major_projects_2/pearl/
That needs some explanation....if you could,
Haha like this will fly! The Enviros will find something that lives around there and then say how it will go extinct if we try to mine around there. Just like they said that caribou would die in ANWR because they didn’t think the caribou could walk over a couple feet of dirt mounds to cross over the pipes.
U.S. Geological Survey
Marine and Coastal Geology Program
Gas (Methane) Hydrates — A New Frontier
Methane trapped in marine sediments as a hydrate represents such an immense carbon reservoir that it must be considered a dominant factor in estimating unconventional energy resources; the role of methane as a ‘greenhouse’ gas also must be carefully assessed.
Dr. William Dillon,
U.S. Geological Survey
Hydrates store immense amounts of methane, with major implications for energy resources and climate, but the natural controls on hydrates and their impacts on the environment are very poorly understood.
Gas hydrates occur abundantly in nature, both in Arctic regions and in marine sediments. Gas hydrate is a crystalline solid consisting of gas molecules, usually methane, each surrounded by a cage of water molecules. It looks very much like water ice. Methane hydrate is stable in ocean floor sediments at water depths greater than 300 meters, and where it occurs, it is known to cement loose sediments in a surface layer several hundred meters thick.
The worldwide amounts of carbon bound in gas hydrates is conservatively estimated to total twice the amount of carbon to be found in all known fossil fuels on Earth.
...
http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html
Is there a simple explanation as to why the plant was so expensive?
It’s technologically feasible to convert Methane into any hydrocarbon. My off the cuff vote would be for 2,2,4 Trimethylpentane, otherwise known as isooctane. Why bother with alcohols? the Oxygen atom decreases their energy storage capacity, and all alcohols are hydrophilic.
Japan may be where it goes into production...see the text.
I have long written that we are almost literally AWASH in hydrocarbons that can be converted into suitable liquid fuels. The ONLY issue was that of total cost.
We do not burn crude oil in our vehicles and aircraft. We burn a technical product that is made, or more properly, constructed, by taking a feedstock of molecules and atoms that are taken apart and reassembled to make the fuel we want. The ONLY issue is the cost of the fuel, for the instant that a new feedstock comes along that is less expensive than the existing one, it will be used.
People who claim “peak oil” are ignorant of economics just as much as the useful idiots who claim there is a shortage of water.
Think I’ll bookmark your two last posts regarding natural gas extraction.
Forget the electic/whatever hybrid car.
Bring back the CNG car/truck technology developed decades ago.
Propane is good too.
Watts wrong with butanol?
Because it is big and complex?
There is a lot to the facility. There are multi-stages to the process. The construction site used 40,000 people and was the size of Central Park. It is one of the world's largest "single" facility.
But given the price of Natural Gas in Qatar, it makes economic sense to spend this much and essentially export very high grade crude (gasoil) versus spending less but still significant capital to export lower value LNG.
Pearl will process about 3 billion barrels-of-oil-equivalent over its lifetime. The return on investment will work. I don't think we will see the lasting return of $20 oil that would make it uneconomic.
I should have added. Most likely the mid-east countries such as Saudi Arabia must be wondering how long their fortunes can hold out. OPEC may find itself on the back door looking in.
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