“The primary cost of synthetic oil at our plant is around $US16 per barrel while the world price of oil now exceeds $US 100.”In this Powerpoint presentation, Professor Volkov details how the Russians are producing high quality liquid fuels from oil shale at $14-$17 per barrel. The Soviets first pulled this off in the 1970s. The plant currently produces 1.5 million barrels per year.
If you read the presentation you will find that our Rock River deposits are richer than the Russian shale, and contain less sulfur, meaning that it is cleaner.
1 comment:
My former brother-in-law translated engineering documents obtained (somehow) by the CIA on the subject of Soviet shale oil production and coal gasification, both subjects dear to the Russians' heart, ever since they stole the technology and it's engineers from Nazi Germany at the end of WW2.
The Russ are FAR ahead of us, but I would take their production cost figures with a grain of salt. Also, know that they TOTALLY disregard any environmental impacts, either on the mining side or the liquification side of production.
When you consider that we have most of the known reserves of coal in the world, and a HUGE supply of shale oil locked in the greasy rock, we probably have, between the two resources, a lock on the VAST majority of the world's known petrochemical resources.
BTW, as far as gas from coal goes, we were making it in quantity (with valuable coke as a by-product) back before the turn of the 20th Century. It was called "producer gas" back then, and in that age before pipelines of any length, most cities made their own gas from coal. It illuminated our society during the brief "gaslight era" of the 1880s to late 1890s.
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