obama's friends are already militating to stop an oil pipeline that would bring Canadian oil from their oil sands here. There is no reason to expect that this will be any different. Expect a law or an executive order hat will make getting oil in this manner effectively illegal.

obama and the greens will never be happy until they have closed off every possible avenue for energy production other than wind and solar.

obama and the greens will never be happy until they have closed off every possible avenue for energy production other than wind and solar.

Don't you mean INCLUDING wind and solar, Jim? Even those supposed greenest of energy sources draw protests from environmental nutjobs.

What the greens truly desire is total control over every aspect of human existence. They can't have that if we're energy independent, so every new potential source of energy will be attacked.

Don't you mean INCLUDING wind and solar,

Fair enough. Perhaps that's why the left feels such an affinity toward radical islam. Both want to return to the 7th century.

The Obamanistas will NEVER permit us to become energy independent...they WANT us dependent!

Their goal is a pre-Industrial Age America...not one that is once again free to compete on the world stage.

I wish I was kidding.

Their goal is a pre-Industrial Age America...not one that is once again free to compete on the world stage.

It's worse than that. Pre-industrial America was still rich in natural resources. They want to bottle all that up too.

If they had their way they would turn back agricultural methods back to the 18th century in order to prove Thomas Malthus right.

But what they really want is impossible. They want all the benefits of the modern age but without any of the things that make it possible.

I believe the environmentalists have stated that "fracking" MAY contaminate the water supply, so we can kiss this entire project good bye here in the US. But, in other countries that are must less controlled/terrorized by environmental groups, this process has potential.
With that in mind, Shell should continue to pursue GTL because the ability to create oil at $20/barrel will force OPEC to compete at $20/barrel........possibly lower.

I can hear the chant from the democrats and the liberal/statist run media..Romney..Romney..Romney..Romney...

"fracking" is not a new process. I've ben in the oil and gas industry for 14 years and we have been doing it long before I started. "fracturing," the formation is done by pumping very high pressure into the producing zone to create new channels for the hydrocarbons to escape. There have ben concerns that the frac oil used could end up migrating into ground water because of the high pursue. At 1000-3000m, that's a very long way to go. Ground water is from 30-300m. We can now frac using water-poly fluids and even propane. Both those options have a much less likely and a lower environmental impact. By the way I have fraced hundteds of wells and never seen or heard of any ground water contamination.

Chris,

Doesn't "fracking" refer specifically to the hydraulic (water-poly fluids) which are being increasingly used?

I also seem to recall that this is all serendipitous outgrowth of earlier well injection schemes intended to extend the lives of nearly spent wells...

Good post. I would disagree with you on Joe Lieberman. He was a fence ssitting handwringer who has a few moderately conservative positions (but not principles)Once he was tapped as GOres VP he dropped them like a flash. 'Long after Gore's loss, Liberman (an orthodox-but, pro-abortion Jew) aggreed with just about all moves to contain the Islamic war against all thing Israeli. To be for the war against terror - Joe was punished by his party -saved by CT folks like myself (bad move -the alternative was even worse)
He has and will change his plastic principles at the drop of a hat (except for Israel)

Hmm ... if the fracking may contaminate groundwater, then put in place measures to keep that from happening. And then let's frack like Starbuck and Apollo.

Another thought. I've followed this off and on, and as I understand it, there's a lot of natural gas under China, too. Which, IMO, is a good thing. If we're not competing with China for energy resources, that's one less thing in the world to worry about.

As to another component of the discussion - Just a little over half of petroleum is refined into gasoline. There are an estimated 10,000+ other products that use other fractions of the distillate. These include plastics and pharmaceuticals amongst others. There is a miniscule amount of waste in the refining process. What there is is burned off. If we are concentrating on reducing the use of gasoline by substitution then we either have to burn off the gasoline excess or decrease consumption of the other 10,000 products.

I have an idea, though. We could take all those obsolete gasoline fueled engines, put them in a field and use them to burn off the gas!

Ray,

If we use LTG to produce the bulk of the Kerosene, Gasoline, and Diesel we require, conventional reserves of crude oil go even further in producing the other distillates we need for the products you mention.

James H,

Ayup.

Rodney, you are saying that this reverse distillation can economically connect the short chain molecules so there isn't excess waste product?

Roy,

Not sure about waste products (if any). The link states that the GTL product is very rich (higher than Light Sweet Crude) in the fractions used to produce Diesel, Kerosene, and Gasoline, and that it does require energy input. Then again, at $20.00/bbl, with higher output of the most sought after distillates, what's not to love about it?

Rodney,

I am certainly not an expert in petroleum engineering so please don't interpret my comments as assertions. Not that you have. Just to clarify.

It seems to me that if this were a viable process we would have to build an infrastructure somewhat comparable to our current refineries. Seems like maybe big bucks for some vague concepts - energy "independence", peak oil and AGW.

Roy

Roy writes @ 18:

I am certainly not an expert in petroleum engineering so please don't interpret my comments as assertions. Not that you have. Just to clarify.

Nor I on both the technical expertise and the assertion fronts.

It seems to me that if this were a viable process we would have to build an infrastructure somewhat comparable to our current refineries.

As I read the article, you are indeed correct. We would have to build the GTL plants within pipeline range of the gas fields. However, moving the product of those GTL plants would seem to be susceptible to current POL transportation. We would also have to adjust refineries to deal with the GTL input to produce the distillates (Diesel, Gasoline, Kerosene) that we need.

Note:

In a June 4th story, Michael Persson reports that the first product is coming from the Shell-Qatari joint project a half-hour out of Doha. The project is called "Pearl" and its function is to transform natural gas into synthetic replacements for petroleum products.

And the current pilot production indicates the process is price competitive at $20.00/bbl, which is 20% of current price for crude.

Rodney,

I will profess a bit of knowledge in the scaling problems in these situations. A number of years ago I was engaged by Henkel of Germany. Not the knife guys. This Henkel was selling reagents to leach copper from mine tailings. It had become profitable to reprocess the mountains of tailings left over from the original smelting.

Let's just say it's rather complex and I don't pretend to understand the processes. I was hired to refine a computer system that projected the results of small scale experiments to production scale so that it reduced the number of keystrokes and saved the results of prior simulations.

I did, however, spend a lot of time talking to the chief engineer about the inner nature of the business. It is on this experience that I don't place much credence on publicists' statements about economic viability.

Roy

Roy,

Agreed that scaling can, and often is, a stone cold bitch. It's not clear to me from the article if it's the engineers or the publicists speaking to the reporter. It does seem to me that this is NOT a small scale effort, but rather an industrial scale proof of concept. As such the scaling issue should have been addressed at this stage.

Still early days, but the prospects are complete game changers.

Rodney,

I couldn't agree more. You brought to my attention a new technology that nobody else seems to have noticed. I guess I maybe got side tracked into nitpickery.

Thank you. And maybe I should lay of the gin a bit.

Roy

Roy,

No worries.

God and the Devil both live in the details.

And I'll not criticize your gin if you forgive my Cognac.

Rodney,

Ah, cognac. Once upon a time, before I ended up in a trailer park in deepest darkest Florida, I lost a bet to the proprietor of a quite nice restaurant. He bet me $100 I couldn't tell him which was the $6 a glass Armagnac and the $200 a glass. I lost the bet but made sure to drink both. We were next door neighbors and I got comped most times. Friends are good.

Love ya,
Roy