Word: coal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...first, about that dubious past. Sasol's origins can be traced to the work of two German scientists, Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch, who in 1923 came up with a process to convert coal to liquid fuel. When Adolf Hitler seized power in coal-rich, oil-poor Germany in 1933, the Nazis used the Fischer-Tropsch process to help power their military expansion across Europe; during World War II, Germany was producing 125,000 bbl. of synthetic fuel a day at 25 plants. After the war, a South African entrepreneur called "Slip" Menell bought the South African rights to Fischer...
...Davies notes, could be dazzling. With the price of crude at one point this year reaching $147 per bbl., interest in alternative sources of oil is unprecedented. A big part of that interest comes from the U.S., India and China, which all rely on oil imports and have massive coal reserves. Feasibility studies for Sasol to build two plants in China, each projected to produce 80,000 bbl. a day by 2012, are at an advanced stage. In the U.S., Sasol is courting interest from several states, including Montana, Illinois and Wyoming, as well as the U.S. military, which...
Brian Ricketts, an analyst at the International Energy Agency, an energy think tank in Paris, says his group expects coal-to-liquids and gas-to-liquids to account for 10% to 15% of world fuel supply by 2050. Even capturing 1% of world oil demand would mean an output of millions of barrels a day--several times Sasol's current global production. Susan Barrows, a chemist and an energy expert at Harrisburg University in Harrisburg, Pa., reckons that given U.S. coal stocks, the country should be able to produce enough oil from coal to replace 30% of its imports...
When Barack Obama chose Joe Biden as his running mate, he surely had Scranton, Pennsylvania, on his mind. Biden, Delaware's senior Senator, was born in this former coal-mining town two hours north of Philadelphia - a point made countless times during his anointment as the Democratic Party's Vice Presidential candidate. To win the crucial swing state, Obama needs help in towns like Scranton, where Hillary Clinton won 74% of the vote in the Democratic primary and where many are still offended by Obama's remarks about "bitter" small town Pennsylvania voters...
...service announcement on littering, starring himself and Office actor Brian Baumgartner (accountant Kevin Malone), agrees the show has been great for tourism. "The stars are here all the time," he says. "It's a riot. They love it." And Scranton needs all the love it can get: after the coal mining industry started to dry up in the 1950s - around the time Biden's family left for the greener pastures of Delaware - it fell into a deep depression and has only just begun to crawl out. "When the city started to decline and the coal industry moved out, we suffered...