Word: coaling
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...Indonesia's failure to launch can be seen as all the more frustrating because the country appears to be missing out on an epic global commodities boom. The archipelago of 17,500 islands is rich in natural gas, copper, coal, gold and other sought-after resources. Yet while some sectors, like palm oil, have seen exports surge, others have stagnated despite soaring commodity prices. A dearth of investment combined with aging fields has reduced the country's once formidable oil industry to near insignificance. Production has plummeted by one third in the past eight years. There may be undiscovered...
...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...
...course, nothing's ever that simple in the energy business. Sasol's end product is cleaner than the average diesel fuel or gasoline, emitting less sulfur and less nitrogen when it burns, says Barrows. Coal-to-liquid plants can also be used to clean up the mountains of coal left over at old mines. But in terms of carbon emissions, Fischer-Tropsch is dirty. A sliding scale of emissions from fossil fuels, goes: coal, petroleum, methane. Coal emits the most carbon dioxide per unit of energy obtained. The resultant fuel also emits more carbon dioxide when burned...