If this is true, what's stopping us?

In 1923, two researchers, Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch, working at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in coal-rich but oil-poor Germany, developed a process for converting coal into synthetic hydrocarbons, including fuel.  Since then, many refinements to their method have been made, and the term "Fischer-Tropsch" refers to a variety of similar processes that perform this synthesis of fuel from coal.

Even back then, this allowed Germany and Japan to develop alternative fuels during WWII.  Germany's annual output of synthetic oil reached 90 million tons in 1944.  After the war scientists in the U.S. continued to work on synthetic fuels.  But, as a rule, these processes were uneconomical as long as the price of crude oil remained below $30 per barrel.

Oil is currently going for somewhat more than that.

I am usually not a participant in conspiracy theories, however much circumstantial evidence may exist for them, because I usually view a conspiracy as too dependent on behavior that goes against human nature--it's too hard to keep something really big a secret for long if your own people are looking for it.  Leaks happen.  (Now that's just me--some folks see conspiracies around every corner.)  When I hear urban legends about a secret 200-mpg carburetor I just smile.  And, as much as I sympathize with them, when I hear fancy theories about how we can become independent of foreign oil using biomass, wind power, or some other promising new energy technology, I seldom give them much credence.

But this story hardly appears to be a crackpot or conspiracy theory.  Note:  I know next to nothing about this sort of technology myself--I'm just evaluating what I read.

Montana's governor wants to solve America's rising energy costs using a technology discovered in Germany 80 years ago that converts coal into gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel.

The Fischer-Tropsch technology, discovered by German researchers in 1923 and later used by the Nazis to convert coal into wartime fuels, was not economical as long as oil cost less than $30 a barrel.

But with U.S. crude oil now hitting more than double that price, Gov. Brian Schweitzer's plan is getting more attention across the country and some analysts are taking him very seriously.

Montana is "sitting on more energy than they have in the Middle East," Schweitzer told Reuters in an interview this week.

"I am leading this country in this desire and demand to convert coal into gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel. We can do it in Montana for $1 per gallon," he said.

...

The governor estimated the cost of producing a barrel of oil through the Fischer-Tropsch method at $32, and said that with its 120 billion tons of coal -- a little less than a third of the U.S total -- Montana could supply the entire United States with its aviation, gas and diesel fuel for 40 years without creating environmental damage.

An entry level Fischer-Tropsch plant producing 22,000 barrels a day would cost about $1.5 billion, he said.

...

California "says they need 25,000 megawatts of electricity during the next ten years," he said. "We'll give you a delivered price and we'll forward contract that for the next 20 years.

"Transmission companies from England, from Canada, from all over America are coming to my office and saying 'we'll build these transmission lines as soon as you have the contracts to build the generation."'

This, to me, doesn't sound like pie in the sky--it sounds like a technology that went unexploited for a long time due to its lack of economy is being re-examined, even if a bit late.

If Gov. Schweitzer is even one-quarter right about how much potential $32-per-barrel oil is in Montana's coal mines, we shouldn't be sitting here talking about it.  We should be building prototype conversion plants now.  Even when the price of oil begins to come back down, the existence of a viable process to produce cheap oil from local natural resources will exert a continuous downward pressure on the price OPEC can get for their product, which now is pretty much whatever they want to charge.

And I don't have to tell you what is the source of revenue for nearly all, if not all, state sponsors of terrorism.  I view this as a matter of national security, and we must examine whether there is any possibility of doing this.

And I confess that if someone suddenly were to say, "Gosh darn it, this looked so very promising...but it turns out that we can't really make economical sythoil out of domestic coal," then I would be just a bit suspicious that I may not be getting the whole story.  I would need to know why the Germans and Japanese could do this 60 to 80 years ago, but we can't do it today--such as, all our coal contains high quantities of spoilium or something that renders it useless for purposes of synthesizing fuel.  But you had better well convince me.  Halfway, handwaving explanations that might work on most folks won't cut it for me or most of the people I know in the Blogosphere.  There are simply too many smart people who know too much about too many things to hide something like this behind a lame excuse.  The knowledge of the Blogosphere is collective.  We've seen numerous examples of that in the last few months alone.

Yes, there are many people who stand to lose a lot if this works.  Ford's development of a mass-produced automobile caused a lot of pain in the buggy whip industry.  But our country stands to gain quite a lot more if it works, quite a few individuals will become very wealthy if it works, and right now I don't have any reason to believe that it won't.

Well, no reason except one:  that we just decide not to try to make it work.

And that's not acceptable.

(Thanks to the open posts on Mudville Gazette, Outside the Beltway and The Indepundit.)

Comments

[tyree]

The obvious answer is... nothing is stopping us and you will see a coal-to oil plant proposed soon. Immediately the eco-lawyers will sue and price of development will double, making the plant uneconomical. It will close and be bought out by the Chinese who will disassemble it and rebuild it in China. We need to address the way our tort system is affecting our economic one. John Edwards won about 125 million in 27 years after passing the bar exam. (http://news.findlaw.com/newsmakers/john.edwards.html) When one person can suck that much money out of the system it is going to help deter investment in anything new. In the end, the consumer is not defended by the tort lawyers, they are hurt by them. I know this is not the entire explanation, but it is a contributing factor.

[Obi-Wan]

Immediately the eco-lawyers will sue and price of development will double, making the plant uneconomical.

tyree, I hope you're wrong about that part, but I fear you may not be.

On what basis do you think environmentalists will sue? Couldn't a case be made that this is good for the environment, all things considered?

[Greg M.]

When was the last time a new refinery of any sort was built in the U.S.? 1976. It is very difficult to get a refinery of any sort built. The usual suspects will protest and hold up a coal refining plant just as aggressively as the regular kind. Even if there were no NIMBY or enviromental opponets you wouldn't see these plants pop up immediately. The cost of a refinery runs into the hundreds of millions and takes a long time to get approved followed by a long construction cycle. An oil company would only go through all this expense if they were fairly certain that oil would remain at these high levels for a very long time. They are NOT certain. Much of the current high price of oil the result of short term supply threats and very profitable gasoline caused by a shortage of refining capacity. For the last two years I've been hearing oil speculators and alleged commodities experts on radio and TV proclaim the age of $100 per barrel oil. In 2003, they said it would be over $100 by the 2004 summer driving season, then the winter heating oil season. When those didn't happen, they said it would be driven over $100 per BBL by the summer of 2005. Well, labor day is upon us and we still haven't seen $100 dollar oil, but a lot of oil traders have sold a lot of oil at inflated prices to speculators betting on the $100 per barrel payoff. But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong :-)

[Laer]

I worked on a coal-to-alternative fuel product in Kentucky in the late 1970s. Good stuff, but no marketing or delivery infrastructure, so the company failed. Today I work getting complex projects approved and see that enviros fight for non-environmental issues. They fight to de-populate the west and kill the internal combustion engine, among other goals. Depopulation and car-killing are both threated by F-T technology, so expect a legal onslaught of biblical proportions.

[LisaGilliam]

I really don't think we have a choice in this matter.But I don't think the GOP is serious about real tort reform.like here in Alabama,they pass crazy laws on tort reform that doesn't benefit the victims of whatever the issue was.Instead,the laws they pass help these companies that caused the problem in the first place.Yes,you are right in saying that trial lawyers now are a problem and that most of them are in it for the money.If the government,whether it is federal or state,should make a sensible sounding bill and get it passed restricted how much these lawyers can make off such cases that would go a long way to stop lawsuit abuses in this country.And I don't want to hear anything from the environmental crazies,and it is time for them to answer to the crap that they help to put the country in this mess to begin with.I believe if the people of these blue states better get wise and stop electing folks like Ted Kennedy to office.

[Obi-Wan]

Unfortunately both political parties are beholden to lawyers' lobbies such as the Bar Association--after all, most congresspeople are lawyers. I don't know if tort reform as we are talking about here will ever happen.