Free Republic

Amid one of the most hotly contested presidential elections in generations — and one in which the Republican presidential candidate has claimed that the balloting process if “rigged” — thousands of New Jersey voters are at risk of not having their votes counted in November. Clerks in at least three Republican-heavy counties have reported that hundreds of mail-in ballots were erroneously returned to voters instead of being delivered to the county election boards. The problem is with new Post Office equipment that was unable to properly read the mailing address on some — but not all — ballot envelopes mailed...

Greyrock Energy said it plans to build a small scale gas-to-liquids facility in Houston in late 2015, taking advantage of a glut of cheap natural gas to be converted into high grade diesel fuel. The company, based in Sacramento, California, has not announced where the plant will be set up, nor who its customers will be. But the project has backing from Sterling Private Capital and Eagle Oil & Gas Co., both based in Dallas. The facility will be able to process as much as 50 million cubic feet per day of natural gas to produce 5,000 barrels per day...

A California-based company claims that it has found a commercially viable technique to directly convert natural gas into liquid fuels or petrochemical building blocks. "Natural gas is the next logical step for the energy and chemistry industry," said Rahul Iyer, vice president of corporate development with Siluria Technologies, which is partnering with world-class refining and petrochemical companies to roll out its catalytic processes for producing ethylene and liquid hydrocarbon fuels or fuel blend stocks. Last month, Siluria announced that it raised nearly more than $30 million in a financing led by Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures (SAEV) – the venture investment...

Turn natural gas into gasoline for $1 per gallon The clear liquid flowing from a collection of pipes and wires in a Hayward industrial park smells just like gasoline, and for all practical purposes, it is.But it wasn’t made from crude oil. Instead, it came from natural gas, the fuel whose sudden abundance in America is reshaping the country’s energy landscape.Siluria Technologies says it can produce large quantities of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and chemicals at a lower cost than traditional refineries and chemical plants. At today’s natural gas prices, Siluria’s technology could make gasoline at roughly $1 per gallon, according to...

Biofuels Power Corp. plans to build a small-scale plant to convert natural gas to synthetic crude on a former power plant site south of downtown Houston as it looks to capitalize on abundant supplies of cheap natural gas, the company announced Monday. The gas-to-liquids plant is a pilot project, the first step in the Humble-based company’s plans to build several small plants at oil fields across the U.S. to capture and convert natural gas now stranded at well sites that don’t have processing or transportation infrastructure to carry the gas to market. Advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have...

Start with exotic Nazi technology, take a detour with South African apartheidists, and add a bit role for Iranian imams. What you have is—what else? —one of the most improbable and important American business stories of the past decade. It's the tale of a company called Sasol, the former South African state oil company, which is embarking on what could be the single-largest foreign investment project in U.S. history. Sasol is building a 3,034-acre energy complex near a bayou in Lake Charles, La. Tapping into cheap, fracked natural gas as well as the pipeline and shipping infrastructure along the Gulf...

Gas-to-liquids (GTL) is a process that converts natural gas to liquid fuels such as gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel. GTL can also make waxes. The most common technique used at GTL facilities is Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) synthesis. Although F-T synthesis has been around for nearly a century, it has gained recent interest because of the growing spread between the value of petroleum products and the cost of natural gas. The first step in the F-T GTL process is converting the natural gas, which is mostly methane, to a mixture of hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide. This mixture is called syngas....

Royal Dutch Shell plc (“Shell”) today announces that the company will not move forward with the proposed 140,000 barrels per day Gulf Coast gas-to-liquids (GTL) project in Louisiana and will suspend any further work on the project. Shell is the industry leader in GTL technology, and the company has carefully evaluated a number of development options for GTL on the US Gulf Coast, using natural gas feedstocks. Despite the ample supplies of natural gas in the area, the company has taken the decision that GTL is not a viable option for Shell in North America, at this time, due to...

Ashtabula is about to benefit from the Utica shale boom, as a Texas energy company and a technology firm from Columbus plan to build a gas-to-liquids processing plant in the city. Houston-based Pinto Energy said it will spend about $300 million to build the plant, which is expected to be completed and online in early 2016. The plant would take processed natural gas from the Utica and Marcellus shale plays and convert it into diesel fuel, high-end lubricants and industrial waxes used in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and other products. Once finished, the plant will employ about 30 people, but Pinto said...

Royal Dutch Shell has picked a site in Louisiana for a plant costing at least $12.5 billion that would turn natural gas into diesel, jet fuel and other liquids, the Louisiana governor’s office announced Tuesday. Shell said the project, which is no sure thing, could help to harness more domestic natural gas to make transportation fuels. The company will continue to consider the option before making an investment decision at the site in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, according to the news release. The plant would offer the benefit of displacing oil used to make fuels and other products and lowering emissions,...

A Texas company says that it has developed a cheaper and cleaner way to convert natural gas into gasoline and other liquid fuels, making it economical to tap natural-gas reserves that in the past have been too small or remote to develop. The company behind the technology, Dallas-based Synfuels International, says that the process uses fewer steps and is far more efficient than more established techniques based on the Fischer-Tropsch process. This process converts natural gas into syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide; a catalyst then causes the carbon and hydrogen to reconnect in new compounds, such as...

Sasol Ltd. (SSL, SOL.JO) said Monday it will begin engineering and design work on what would be the first refinery to convert natural gas into diesel in the U.S., paving the way for one of the largest investments from the boom in U.S. shale gas production. The facility, estimated to cost about $14 billion, would convert low-cost natural gas into clean-burning diesel it can sell at much higher prices. Sasol plans to locate the facility in Westlake, Louisiana, and if greenlighted, it will become the single largest investment in the state's history, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said. Sasol said it...

Qatar Airways completed the first commercial flight this week using fuel produced from natural gas, the company said. The flight used fuel from the Pearl GTL plant in Qatar, through a partnership between the airline and the plant, jointly owned by Qatar Petroleum and Shell. The fuel was made from a blend of gas-to-liquids kerosene and conventional oil-derived jet fuel. It powered an Airbus A340-600 on a flight from Doha to London, the companies said in a statement. Shell says its gas-to-liquids products have fewer emissions than conventional jet fuel and are more environmentally friendly. The gas-to-liquids kerosene can comprise...

World's largest gas-to-liquids project to start in weeks * Developed by Shell, Qatar Petroleum at a cost of $18-$19 bln * Plant to produce fuels such as diesel, kerosene, naphtha (Adds decline in Malaysian field ouput, details on renewables) Royal Dutch Shell expects oil product output at its joint venture gas-to-liquids project in Qatar to start in weeks, bringing online the world's biggest facility built at a cost of about $18-$19 billion. "It's very exciting because it's a huge start-up," Vice President for Strategy Dick Benschop told reporters at an industry event in the Malaysian capital. "The first crude is...

Exxon Mobil Corp. has abandoned plans to build a $7 billion facility to convert natural gas to diesel with Qatar's state-owned oil company in exchange for a bigger stake in the world's largest gas field. In lieu of the gas-to-liquids plant, Exxon agreed to develop the Barzan section of Qatar's North Field, which holds enough gas to meet 44 years of U.S. demand. Exxon Mobil is the first company to win rights to drill the resource since Qatar declared a moratorium in October 2006 on new developments to extend the life span of the nation's reserves. The Barzan project is...

RAS LAFFAN INDUSTRIAL CITY, Qatar: The rat's nest of pipes and columns snaking across the desert harbors a secret process that will use cobalt to turn natural gas into a powerful, clean-burning diesel fuel. By next year, rulers of this tiny desert sheikdom hope, these gas-to-liquids (GTL) reactors under construction will bring in billions of dollars while clearing big city smog belched by trucks and buses. Petroleum experts who have sniffed vials of gin-clear GTL diesel speak of it with reverence. "It's a beautiful product," says Jim Jensen, a Massachusetts-based energy economist. "The kerosene smells like perfume." In all, some...