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unless one thinks that a thousand square miles of land will be devoted to algae growing in the near future.

I've been in the oil & gas industry my entire career, and specialized in drilling / exploration / technology.

While the amount of recoverable oil at various economic levels is still huge - at least a centuries worth even now - I still believe that the long term solution is genetic / molecular engineering and growing oil in modified plants.

THIS technology is like where computers were in the 60's - we are JUST getting started in undertanding this - let alone use it to engineer things like bio-oil... for example...

Similar to algae, some seaweeds grow 3' a day. And algae itself, of high lipid content is indeed a viable solution, especially with engineering.

Creating an algae with grape-like sacs that are full of vegetable oil, with a 2-4 week maturity cycle, will do the deal.

And as far as land is concerned? NO big deal at all. Why would one think a thousand square miles - 640,000 acres - is a big issue?

10,000 gallons / acre / (42 gallons/bbl oil) = 238 bbls oil per year PER ACRE - at $60/bbl = $14.3K per acre. Not many "legal" drops make this kind of money. For example, an acre of tobacco makes about $4K per acre to the farmer. Opium poppies pay about $4K to $8K per acre at the farm.

In a specialized niche, small pick-ur-own fruit operations on the US east coast can net $20K/acre...

www.fruitgrowersnews.com/pages/arts.php?ns=270

In the US, 60+M acres are used to grow hay, with 20+M to grow alfalfa. They don't make much money doing this.

If we take this alfalfa acreage = 20M acres... AND lets say we only get 10K gallons per acre per year and not the 20K some people claim... This equals 238 bbls per acre per year... which equals on 20M acres, 4.76B bbls/year... Which equals 13M bbls per day.

Which is ALL the oil we import per day...

FROM CIA WORLD FACTBOOK US OIL CONSUMPTION 2004 - 20.8M BBL/DAY US OIL IMPORTS 2004 - 13.15M BBL/DAY

Converting alfalfa to algae, and the US becomes 100% energy independent.

Even if this is only 20% or 30% "true/achievable" it is worth doing.

20M acres = a square 560 miles on each side.

We can do this in Texas all by ourselves, without even needing the rest of the country.

BUT lets say we break this into 20 regions scattered across the country to disperse production and infrastructure risk. You have 20 areas that are 125 miles on a side.

This is simply NOT an impossible task, given the free enterprise reward of getting 238 bbls / acre of oil at "market price".

If the world price fell ALL THE WAY to $35 a bbl with this "algae-oil" economy, that is still $8300 an acre per year income.

On a square mile section, with 10% held out for roads, gathering equipment, etc. - the is STILL $4.75M per year per square mile growing algae.

I will take THAT deal any day!!!

Now all I need to do is invent and patent an algae-grape-rapeseedoil hybrid...

[I've been in the oil & gas industry my entire career, and specialized in drilling / exploration / technology.

While the amount of recoverable oil at various economic levels is still huge - at least a centuries worth even now - I still believe that the long term solution is genetic / molecular engineering and growing oil in modified plants.

{snip}

If the world price fell ALL THE WAY to $35 a bbl with this "algae-oil" economy, that is still $8300 an acre per year income.

On a square mile section, with 10% held out for roads, gathering equipment, etc. - the is STILL $4.75M per year per square mile growing algae.

I will take THAT deal any day!!! ]

Outstanding post from an Oil industry insider.

Always amazed at the diversity and dept of the expertise here on FR.

Thanks for the Post!

[ Now all I need to do is invent and patent an algae-grape-rapeseedoil hybrid...]

Can we grow it in our gardens? ;-)

=Bill

Having been in any industry, and the oil and gas industry in particular, you know income is only half the story. The other half is production costs. A $14,000 or $140,000 income per acre is meaningless if the costs of obtaining that income is equal to or larger than the income itself.
Farmers can earn a profit on low income crops when their costs of production are low too so comparing hay or poppies to algae really doesn't work if algae oil production costs are unknown.
No one discusses the cost of production of algae oil because it is going to be so high in comparison to production of oil from other sources that it isn't a serious competitor.
Like the 300 mile/gallon carburetor the “algae will replace imported oil” process just needs a little tweaking to work, tweaking like vastly reducing production costs.
Then there is opportunity costs, the same amount of money going into oil shale and/or coal would produce more oil at less costs and the country has plenty of both. Short and long term.
Algae is like opera, it's even worse than it sounds.

Great post bookmark, thanks! And thanks for working in the “evil” oil industry so I can enjoy a modern and independent lifestyle.

Even better, put it inside pipes running vertically in old warehouses. You could use the CO2 from an ethanol plant, and the food source from digested manure outflow.

The methane could be used to provide heat and light for the algae. The ethanol could be used to transesterify the algae oil to fuel.