Making Gasoline without Crude Oil

How do we wean ourselves from the petroleum addiction?

Today’s energy challenges present us with good news, and bad news. First, the bad news. Each and every day the United States consumes twenty (20) million barrels of crude oil. We produce seven (7) million barrels leaving a delta of thirteen (13) million barrels of oil that we need to purchase from foreign sources. At current levels of $90 a barrel, that adds up to nearly $1.2B a day that we send outside the country to purchase oil, or $427B a year. That represents eighty per cent (80%) of our annual trade deficit.

Now for some good news. There are technologies being developed that could produce copious amounts of gasoline and other transportation fuels by using other fossil fuels such as natural gas. The United States has more natural gas than any other country in the world. Known estimated reserves are four thousand trillion cubic feet. That is the equivalent of seven hundred billion barrels of crude oil, or three times the current amount in Saudi Arabia.

Santa-Barbara, CA based, Carbon Sciences, is working on a technology that combines methane from natural gas with carbon dioxide (CO2) to create a syn gas, or fuel precursor, that can then be converted into gasoline. This is a drop-in replacement for the crude oil-based gasoline we currently use, allowing us to utilize the current infrastructure, supply chain and vehicles – an enormous advantage over other technologies. The consumption of large amounts of CO2 in the process that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere, is an additional benefit.

The methane used in the process can be sourced from traditional natural gas fields, or other sources including landfills, algae and biomass, coal-fired plants, flare gas and livestock gas.

The world is not facing an energy crisis, it is facing a fuel crisis. We are not running out of electricity, we are running out of cheap, easy crude oil. The utilization of domestic natural gas and greenhouse gases to make transportation fuels will benefit the environment and the economy, create well-paying jobs and achieve the energy independence that we have longed for and talked about for too long.

Guest post by:Byron Elton, CEO of Carbon Sciences