Word: oiled
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...much of it has to do with leadership. For the last eight years we've had a President and Vice President who have basically said our use of oil is a God-given right. Imagine if our President said tomorrow, I'm going to get rid of my armor-plated limousine and I'm going to have an armor-plated Ford Escape hybrid...
Former Saudi oil minister Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani once said, "The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones." The oil age will not end because we've run out of oil. It will end because people invent alternatives...
Opinions on oil companies fall into two camps. If you own one or work for one, you'll probably see oil companies as vital lubricants of the world economy, without which business and development would collapse and millions would stagnate in poverty. If you're anyone else, you'll know them as giant enterprises making billion-dollar profits, by turns accused of holding the world economy hostage, precipitating a global food crisis and endangering the planet. Now imagine the public relations nightmare facing an oil company that uses technology responsible for powering Nazi Germany, that propped up apartheid for decades...
...transformation of Sasol from a company with the most dubious of pasts into a company with the brightest of futures illuminates our can't-live-with-it, can't-live-without-it relationship to oil. The future well-being of the planet depends on our reduction of fossil-fuel emissions. On the other hand, the future well-being of much of humanity depends on our continued use of fossil fuels. The way companies like Sasol negotiate this dilemma will help determine the future...
...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...