Cheaper gas is just a few clicks away

Just make sure the ROI is there before you go out of your way for that 'cheaper' gasoline. Time is money too.

I just received the following email. Just add to the discussion.

Don't tell me the U.S.A. can't reduce the price of gasoline . Those big companies just love money.

Technology to convert natural gas into diesel fuel and gasoline has been around for years, but the process is complex and often expensive.

Now, Santa Fe start-up GeoGas Development Corp. says it can squeeze liquid fuels out of natural gas at a fraction of conventional costs -- a breakthrough that could help producers recover costs from non-productive gas wells.

"I think this is the biggest advance we've seen in 50 or 60 years," says Jeff Pfohl, a business and technology consultant with Global Platinum Group LLC. "The GeoGas technology cuts out all the middle steps that make the conventional conversion process expensive. It converts natural gas directly into diesel and gasoline in just one simple step. Nobody has done that before."

Under current technology, companies must pass natural gas through multiple distillation columns that use a variety of catalysts to convert gas into various hydrocarbon liquids. Afterwards, they must still convert those liquids into diesel fuel or gasoline.

But GeoGas eliminates all those steps, says company founder Gary Elion, a lawyer and entrepreneur who has specialized in energy technologies.

"We've narrowed the technology down to just one stage, and that makes it significantly less expensive than other available technologies," Elion says. "With this process, producers could sell diesel and gasoline at just $1.50 or $1.60 per gallon to distributors."

Apart from simplifying the process, GeoGas technology can convert dirty gas laden with hydrogen sulfide, nitrogen or carbon dioxide into diesel and gasoline as easily as clean gas.

Elion declined to discuss his proprietary process, but he says the technology will be packaged into mobile, modular units for placement directly at well sites.

"It can be assembled at the head of an abandoned or capped well," Elion says. "When the resources there are used up, the producer can move the whole unit to another well."

Elion will present his company at Technology Ventures Corp.'s Equity Capital Symposium in May. He is seeking $625,000 in seed funds to develop a prototype unit to demo the technology at a natural gas well.

Later on, he'll seek about $25 million in private equity to build a factory -- either in Farmington or Las Cruces -- that will employ 200 people. The plant will build small units priced at $5 million for domestic producers to pump 900,000 gallons of diesel and gasoline per year. Larger units that pump 7.2 million gallons annually would be sold internationally for about $40 million, Elion says.

"The international market for this technology is monstrous," says Pfohl, who advised GeoGas on marketing strategies. "The national market could also be big."

Rick Lentz, chief marketing officer for WellKeeper Inc. -- an Albuquerque-based company that offers low-cost satellite and Web-based monitoring of oil and gas wells -- agrees that the international market is huge. However, Lentz is more cautious about the domestic market.

"Many U.S. companies are looking at innovative ways to get trapped or shut-in natural gas to market," Lentz says. "Some are using generators at well heads to burn the gas into electricity for the grid. On the domestic market, he'll face a lot of competition."

I wish GeoGas the best, as this would be very useful for in those parts of the world that just flare off the gas because there isn't a good way to collect and transport it to the market.

The skeptic in me hopes this isn't just a snake oil venture.

Sorry folks, more bunkum and hokum, it seems.

More energy expended in searching for, obtaining the cheap gasoline, then returning back to where you were, than the saved amount.

Kind Regards....