[Gasification] Corrupt government, conspiracy, new world order, no future.

[Bob Stuart]

On 4-Mar-08, at 12:15 PM, Harmon Seaver wrote:

> Greg and April wrote:
>> Shoot, the Green river formation of oil shale, holds more  
>> hydrocarbon's than
>> the entire Middle East.    We just have to find a way of  
>> recovering it in a
>> way that will keep the enviro's from making a fuss.
>>
>> Greg H.
>>
>
>    ROTFL -- no, you have to find a way to extract it that makes  
> economic
> sense. Nobody has thus far figured that one out.
>

Gosh, for a bit there, I was feeling like part of an all-powerful  
movement!  :-)

There may be a way to get the fuel out using bacteria, but we still  
have to make sure to put more carbon back.

Bacteria: Turning tar sands into natural gas

Dennis T. Avery

Avery is a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington,  
D.C., and is the director for the Center for Global Food Issues.

Scientists said recently in the journal Nature they can radically  
speed up the underground bacterial fermentation that turns Canada's  
tar-like Athabasca sands into natural gas at far less cost and with  
far less environmental pollution.

This is huge global news because the world has about 6 trillion  
barrels of such heavy oil, more than 20 times the proven oil reserves  
in Saudi Arabia. They're focused in Canada's Athabasca, in  
Venezuela's Orinoco tar belt, and in the oil shale of the U.S. Rocky  
Mountains. All may be economically recoverable with bacterial refining.

Dr. Steve Larter of the University of Calgary says understanding how  
anaerobic bacteria ferment heavy oil into clean-burning methane  
underground opens the door to recovering the gas from deeply buried  
oil sands.

"The main thing is you'd be recovering a much cleaner fuel," he says.  
"Methane is, per energy unit, a much lower carbon dioxide emitter  
than bitumen."

A separate family of microbes that produces CO2 and hydrogen from  
partly degraded oil offers a way to capture the CO2 from the tar  
sands as methane, for burning in a closed-loop system would keep the  
CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Larter's research team combined microbiological studies, lab  
experiments and oil field case studies to demonstrate the anaerobic  
degradation of oil into methane. The findings offer the potential of  
"feeding" the microbes and rapidly accelerating the gas production  
process. Says Larter, "Instead of 10 million years, we want to do it  
in 10 years. We think it's possible. We can do it in the laboratory.  
The question is can we do it in a reservoir?"

No longer would huge diesel shovels have to dig up three tons of sand  
for each ton of heavy oil recovered. Nor would refiners inject  
expensive steam to liquefy the heavy oil so it can flow to the  
surface. With bacterial refining, the tar and the contaminating  
sulfur can be left deep underground -- along with most of the sand.

The oil-eating bacteria have been used for some years to clean up  
contaminated soils and lagoons near oil refineries. Lab results have  
been encouraging, and the team expects to do field tests as early as  
2009.

At almost the same moment, a Penn State professor said drilling newly  
feasible horizontal gas wells across the Marcellus black shale in  
northern Appalachia could earn the U.S. $1 trillion worth of  
additional clean-burning energy. The rock deposits run from southern  
New York westward through Pennsylvania into West Virginia and Ohio.

Dr. Terry Engelder says the vertical fractures in the Marcellus shale  
can't effectively be tapped with vertical wells. A horizontal well  
costs three times as much, but can collect gas from dozens of the  
fractures. He says the horizontal wells could bring in 50 trillion  
cubic feet of gas, the equivalent of a Super Giant gas field.

Eco-activists have been telling us we should renounce fossil fuels  
because they're nearly gone anyway. However, the U.S. has centuries  
worth of coal that could be burned in "clean" high-tech systems.  
Bacterial refining and Engelder's horizontal drilling offer other  
examples of high-tech energy. Cambridge Energy Research Associates  
predicted in June that world oil production would rise another 30  
percent by 2017, with nearly half of the increase from unconventional  
sources such as natural-gas liquids.

[CERA's reputation is very low among Peak Oil writers.  They do not  
see how a 30% increase can be achieved, or even much less increase.   
Geo.]

Man-made global warming alarmists have failed to offer any cost- 
effective substitute for coal, oil and nuclear in base-load energy  
production. Solar and wind power are costly and erratic. Biofuels  
take too much land away from nature. The problem is to bridge the  
energy gap between today and some as-yet-unproven energy technology  
for humanity's future.



Best,
Bob Stuart