And oil is not the only resource we have. We have coal, IN ABUNDANCE, to make America self-sufficient in energy for centuries to come. What happened to coal-to-liquid-fuel technology? We know it is there, we only lack the will to put it into practice. There is a process, called reformulation, that can change natural gas (mostly methane) into longer-chain alkanes, hexane, heptane, octane, nonane, dodecane, hexadecane and that gold standard for automobile engines, iso-octane.
And we have LOTS of natural gas. Major by-product of working oil wells, as a matter of fact. Not only that, there are underground deposits that consist of practically nothing BUT natural gas under extremely high pressure, in fact, the problem here is to keep it from coming out TOO fast. Natural gas in the process of becoming entrapped in sedimentary layers is simply lying on the ocean floor, where the temperature hovers around 38º F (about 4ºC.), contained in a water-methane matrix called Methane Hydrate, a totally stable substance that will remain that so long as the temperature does not rise above about 41º F. This substance resembles ice, and is rather amorphous. Simply scoop this substance up off the ocean floor, where it lies pretty immobile, deposit it in a containment vessel, and allow it to warm. The methane and water dissociate, releasing the methane (which has some 164 times the volume of the Methane Hydrate from which it came), and let the gaseous methane come to a surface ship, where it is cooled and compresed back into liquified natural gas, LNG, which then may be transported to ports all over the world. It is estimated that the quantity of all the Methane Hydrate in the ocean floor is a couple of HUNDRED times as much energy as is contained in all the known coal, crude oil and natural gas reservoirs everywhere on earth. More importantly, this Methane Hydrate is continuously forming, as organic materials that have sunk to great depths decompose into constituent molecules, methane being one of the simplest and most stable. These molecules of methane, under the constant steady pressure and unchanging temperature of 38º F. in the ocean depths, are physically forced into the Methane Hydrate conformation.
Note that this is not a chemical reaction. It is merely the most stable conformation that water and methane form at that temperature.
Natural gas wells are formed when deposits of this Methane Hydrate are buried in silt, which solidifies into sedimentary rock over time. As the Methane Hydrate is removed from the cooling effect of the water in which it was once beneath, by the gradual warming of the earth’s crust by residual heat radiating out from the molten center, the Methane Hydrate gasifies under tremendous pressure, resulting in the natural gas wells found at various depths beneath the ocean.
Is it beastly stuff to handle? Well, mmm, yeah. Nothing that is tougher, say, than anchoring a drilling platform at sea, and tapping into the ocean floor three miles below to a depth of seven miles or so, to capture trapped petroleum and natural gas there. In fact, in the process of hitting these deep wells, the operator often has to go through a layer of varying depth of this Methane Hydrate, just to hit the substrate below.
The Japanese are really interested in researching this substance, you might look up what kind of progress they have made already in recovering Methane Hydrate. They are very nearly at the commercial industrial level already.
The world is going to depend on carbon-based fuels for a long, long time. After all, the product of combustion of carbon is carbon dioxide, a very vital link in the life process of every living thing on Planet Earth.
Carbon dioxide is plant food. It is not, by definition, any more of a “pollutant” than water or oxygen.
No matter what the ruling of any politically motivated legislature or court may claim.
The question is how to educate the masses to demand that Washington not go along with it?
There is plenty of oil. Enough to last hundreds of years at the least.
Possibly a thousand.