xracer wrote:


Your recall is as reliable as the rest of the nonsense you post.

Occam wrote:


Yep, good old free market economics at work. Tight supply = higher prices = restricted consumption. At least until the politicians get in there and muck things up.

Every Greenie's nightmare:
Texas university has eureka moment for coal-to-gas

U of M researchers close in on technology for making renewable "petroleum" using bacteria, sunlight and carbon dioxide



The he shuts down oil exploration in the U.S., gives loans to Brazil to do it, then says he wants to become energy independent. Brilliant!


Yeah, let's flush more billions down the rabbit hole for useless free energy machines, after all its only money paper....
is.gd/nATKI4
is.gd/BNNQDm

I'd have one in my back yard if they were worth it.

www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3...d=2010&unit=TBPD
www.ers.usda.gov/data/macroeconomics/dat...calrealgdpvalues.xls

Worldwide Oil Demand Outweighs OPEC's Present Supply: Report

www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/10/opec-s...ld-oil_n_874718.html





a large part of the difference between consumption and production, in the charts above, is accounted for by such things as biofuels, oil made from coal and other non-conventional sources, which are not included in their production figures.

www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/...tion-and-consumption

I think if you look at history you will see that use of energy (oil,coal, gas etc) either follows or leads to prosperity of that country. The US use of available resources has been cut, and our need for foreign imports makes us compete in the Global Marketplace and China and India are now in the position of growing and being able to pay for the oil. That to me is one of the reasons US industry is going overseas for manufacture. We have priced ourselves out of the resource picture and are paying the economonic result. It is surprising to me that the present admnistraion will not accept the coal, and its conversion to gasoline and oil products are a resource to be used instead of being regulated out of contention for our energy supply mix. At the formentioned $50 a barrel for conversion of coal to oil porducts seems to me to be a viable alternative to our energy dependence. I understand Europe uses coal and converts it to useable energy (I use clean or cleaner usage and gasification). Somehow our Solar, wind, and green energy policies are hindering our recovery as they do not seem to increase the energy supply required for our economonic recovery. I maintain we use the available coal and conversion at present prices be used instead of not.

I don't know much about the subject, so what I'm going to say could very well be wrong. But I would suppose that this cannot be correct, or is at least not the whole story. If it were true, we would have been doing it a long time ago.

I don't know much about it either, but as I understand it capital costs for coal to diesel plants are huge, making it a risky investment given that it competes with volatile oil and natural gas. But if oil prices stay in the $100/barrel region and are foreseen to continue to stay high then coal to diesel becomes economically attractive as long as consumers and taxpayers stupidly continue to subsidize the external costs of CO2 emissions. And, of course if coal prices don't rise excessively. These syn fuels are wasteful from an energy perspective as it takes a lot more energy to produce a barrel of coal oil than crude oil. And for every mile you drive, these syn fuels emit twice as much CO2 as fuel from oil.

In a world where the costs of CO2 emissions are laid at the source, coal has no chance of being economically competitive with solar and wind unless they can find a way to reliably and practically sequester the CO2. As our environment continues to deteriorate from global warming there will be more and more pressure to regulate and/or tax CO2 emissions so I doubt these synfuels will find widespread acceptance.

US oil production has no effect on gas prices.

Should be obvious to the even modestly informed (which apprently does not include Newt G. - unless he is just a liar, nor does it include the great unwashed masses), but here it is...again..
content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadl...-prices/1?csp=34news