Ironduke

If we find ourselves in a real pinch, it would be an immense assert to be able to derive fuel oil from coal. Nuclear power does nothing to help with oil consumption directly, but it would preserve our coal resources so that they could be used as a source of fuel oil in an emergency.

Unlike these speculated, possible large reserves in Alaska and the Gulf, our coal supply is a sure thing, and a safe bet.

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The Buck Stops Here

SteaminDemon

So would you propose just using some coal to make oil to transfer to our reserves for just in case instances? There I could agree, but as for wide spread use we should invest the money instead in exploration.

I do think once Iraq has a stable government and better control over their oil production, the only right thing to do is supply Iraq's allies with oil at the right price. Will Iraq be a part of OPEC? Who knows, they may just go at it alone. I think the outcome of future Iraq, will be a future supplier to the United States and Iraq's other Allies as well, and they may just bypass OPEC in the process. Only the future will tell.

About the "possible large reserves in Alaska and the Gulf" we need to turn 2 ,explore and make those possibilities a reality.

Ironduke

I don't propose that we use coal for our entire oil consumption, just that we have the capability to do so if we have to, and begin to preserve our coal resources in the possibility we may desperately need it in the future. The plant in S. Africa is profitable, and I think such facilities would be profitable in the US. I think we should build a few installations capable of churning out gasoline and diesel, use them, with the ability to massive ramp up production for unforeseen events.

Who knows... we could even use such a capability to make threats to leverage the price of oil itself.

Hopefully the reserves in the Gulf and Alaska are a reality.

SteaminDemon

Damn Skippy. I hope so. We should take it and further increase our reserve oil, and utilize the rest for ourselves.

captain

As the price of oil hits ever increasing highs, the coal to gas and gas to liquid industry seems to be getting their acts together and making big gains in efficiencies.

One such company that I have been watching for a year now is Linc Energy.

In 2007 Linc took a 60% interest in a coal to gas company in Uzbekistan that had been producing gas continually for close to 50 years.
Linc also has an agreement with Syntroleum Corp USA for tech transfer.

For those interested in the proceess and where the industry is headinding visit;
Coal to Liquids - Gas to Liquids - Linc Energy - Fueling Our Future

As coal is abundant in most parts of the world and the Middle East continues to be unstable, I think the coal to liquids technologies will improve at an exponential rate.

BTW, I don't own any shares in link,,,yet.

Cheers.

Ironduke

Did a little number crunching.

The Sasol Plant processes 160,000 barrels of oil for every 120,000 tons of coal put in.

That's 1⅓ barrel of oil per ton.

American coal power plants consumed 1.05 billion tons of coal last year, enough to produce exact 1.4 billion barrels of oil a year, or 20% of our current oil consumption.

We have an estimated 264 billion tons of coal in recoverable reserves, and a total of 491 billion tons in reserves.

We consumed 7.55 billion barrels of oil last year, of which we produced 3.04 billion barrels.

Build nuke plants, take the coal plants offline, convert the coal currently being used to generate electricity into oil.

That makes 4.26 billion barrels of oil produced domestically, or 56.4% of total consumption.

We import 1.23 billion barrels of oil from Canada and Mexico a year.

Add this to the figure from domestic oil production and possible oil production from coal, and we arrive at 5.5 billion barrels a year produced in NAFTA countries, or 73% of total oil consumption.

If we add in the Virgin Islands, the UK, Brazil, Ecuador, and Colombia, friendly or nearby countries, from whom we import 400 million barrels a day, we come to 5.9 billion barrels of oil imported/produced in NAFTA and friendly countries, or 78% of total oil consumption.

Double coal production, convert it into oil (an additional 1.4 billion barrels), and we get 7.3 billion barrels, or 96.7% of total oil consumption.

An extra 190 million tons of coal would get us to 100%. Not a drop of oil from the Middle East, Africa, or Venezuela.

gunnut

And we should convert as much of our food supplies into ethanol as possible to jack up world food prices. Then pop some corn and watch the show.

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"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

Ironduke

Uh, no.

Drake

I think you kinda underestimate the sheer size of the infrastructure transformations required for your plan and the time it would require to build all the stuff. I'd say 3 decades would be a pretty optimistic figure, 5 decades more realistic. Germany produced a meagre 22 million tonnes of synthetic fuel during the entire ww2 (in 12 plants, each of which took 5 years and loads of money to build), the US today burns that amount of fuel in less than a week (20 million barrels ~ 3,4 tonnes a day). Sasol 2 produces 80000 barrel/day. You'd need to build 250 of these (pretty big) plants plus the additional 300 nuke plants to replace the coal plants just to meet the current consumption level (currently 104 nuke plants in the US). Not to mention, that US oil production, just as the oil production of mexico, the uk etc. are in terminal decline, so you'd have to make up for that as well.