[ExI] Oil will never run out

Kevin Freels kevinfreels at insightbb.com
Sat Jun 28 17:02:06 UTC 2008


> 
> It's not a big deal to make hydrocarbons out of biomass or even 
> to 
> use CO2 pulled out of the air.  All it takes is industrial 
> plant and 
> *lots* of energy.  On an industrial scale, you can make 
> gasoline for 
> about a dollar a gallon from electric power at a penny a kWh, or 
> ten 
> dollar a gallon gasoline out of 10 cents a kWh power.  

So the price of the gas could be related to the price of electricity and NOT based on the amount of oil in the ground. So the solution here is more cheap electricity which I think is a much simpler solution than developing an entirely new infrastructure to support new technologies for transportation.

Here's some links to efforts that are up and coming...

http://www.ls9.com/
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1979Sci...206...57W
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11653571/    Gasoline from cattle dung.... Hope my car doesn't run like crap!

There are a lot of companies working on this and I think it's just a matter of time before it happens. And it's not 10, 20, or 30 years into the future. It's a few years away. By 2039 when some suggest we'll be out of oil, people most companies won't want to waste the money it costs to drill, pump, transport, and refine the "real" stuff. 
No doubt the development costs will keep these people from releasing their gen en bacteria to the general population for my "open source gas factories" but never underestimate the the ingenuity of human beings. Espionage, the balck market for trade secrets and other such things will cause this little germ to eventually venture out into the world. Trade Secrets tend not to remain trade secrets for very long. I do hope they make their money back and a decent profit before this happens though.
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