Fischer-Tropsch Synthetic Oil and Oil Shale Tar Sands

What more do you want? Half of Alberta is being dug up for tar sands right now, and they are building upgraders as fast as they can....

Googling the phrase "Nazi synthetic oil" displays this story as the first result. Here's an excerpt from the article.

"If the U.S. is in an energy bind, consider the one that Nazi Germany faced in the 1930s: it prepared to fight a world war with no secure reserves of oil at all. . . Could the Nazi know-how help the U.S. three decades later?"

Three decades later? What the heck? It's 2008! Then I checked the story's publication date: April 18, 1977.

As I understand it due to the cost of extracting it from rock was not economical until oil reached about 90 dollars a barrel. With the sharp increase in oil prices there are very few operations in place to due so.

Which is the same for Nazi synthetic oil was extracted from coal.

Try this: Go to the DOE document library search function. Search in "title" for the word "shale", then the phrase "tar sand" then for "synthetic." For each search read the bunch of documents that show. It might be interesting.

BLM is right on top of the matter......

Congress passed the Oil Shale and Tar Sand Development Act of 2005 to "To promote oil shale and tar sand development, and for other purposes. " It is focused on ways to get to the 1.3Tbl of oil shale, primarily, but also tar sands, syn fuel from coal and to meet the DoD's needs. It makes one suspect they were maybe not entirely asleep at the wheel.

A 2006 report of the Congressional Research Service titled: Oil Shale: History, Incentives, and Policy

And of course some tree-hugger concerns about the manner of development,

A note of 'interest" - Oil-shale delay sought : Energy : The Rocky Mountain News

Looks like you are right. We are not ready for oil shale - maybe ten more years. At least.

...& look where it got them!

Sasol is using the process (coal - oil) and it was viable in 1957. (at 12 $ per barrel?).

We even increased capacity with more plants.

The cost of Sasol fuel must be compared to crude price , transport of crude, refining, transport of petrol (600km). The chemical product spin-off should also be considered.

Granted that lack of oil abundant supply of coal may help in the calculations.

I'll ask an additional question. Given the price of crude oil currently, why arent developments underway to build a Fischer-Tropsch plant for coal to gasoline conversion (ala SASOL)? I did research in this area back in the 1970's. Interestingly, I knew a professor on the Presidents Energy Council who was looking at coal gasoline. He wasnt even aware of the Sasol Process. Somehow, we need to get the proper people on these councils.

I suspect it wont happen because big oil controls most major coal reserves. They bought them up during the LAST energy crisis when the were flush with cash from winfall profits, and had concerns that the US might be forced to coal gasoline.

The US has massive coal reserves and should be using them. But then the greenies might not like that. Far as I know Sasol hasnt generated massive environmental problems.

I don't have a lot of time to research, but look at these:

At DOE's National Renewable Energy Lab: NREL and California Air Agency to Test Clean Diesel Fuels It is noted the synthetic is made commercially overseas. There must be a process.

USAF is converting its fleet of planes to synthetic: SECAF certifies Fischer-Tropsch synthetic fuel blends for B-52H (http://www.afmc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123063849 - sorry, link no longer available) IT is noted NASA is testing it as well. USAF bought 281,000 gals. more. It is made somewhere.

The infrastructure is in place for distribution. Manufacturing development has been completed. It seems large scale manufacturing facilities are only overseas. This supports the idea that something prevents production here in the States. Question is "What?"

What is the basis of your suspicions?

Not suspicions as I was involved in fuels research at the time these actions occurred. Also, I met a retired US Federal judge a year ago who confirmed my observations. Actually, back in the 1970's -1980's he was acting for big oil at the time they made some of these coal company acquisitions. The technology of Sasol has been around since the mid-1950's and is a matter of record. Sasol's plants are huge low-grade coal consumers. Use of this technology in the US would put miners to work and be a boon to industry with managable environmental risk.

Obviously, since the DOE and military is using the materials, it is viable. The problem with FT fuels when first developed was more one of downgrading the fuel rather than upgrading it. Few feedstocks were available.

I am just amased that the public hasnt started raising the question of coal gasoline when it has been in use for so long.

Water Doc,

You keep using the word "Sasol" which means nothing to me, so I looked it up. It is the name of a company in S. Africa (Probably the source used by the USAF.) This is from Wikipedia:

• "Sasol (originally Afrikaans for Suid-Afrikaanse Steenkool en Olie - South African Coal and Oil) is a South African company involved in mining, energy, chemicals and synfuels. In particular, they produce petrol and diesel profitably from coal and natural gas using Fischer-Tropsch synthesis."

The company has long-term involvement with major oil industry types, including those in the near East. At just a glance, it appears to be not quite a true trans-national corporation.

• "... The company has factories at Sasolburg and Secunda and has taken a stake in projects under construction in Qatar (Oryx GTL), Iran (Arya Polymers) and Nigeria (Escravos GTL)."

A very curious article in Slate magazine, titled:

• Thanks for the Cheap Gas, Mr. Hitler! _{How Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa perfected one of the world's most exciting new fuel sources.}

By Daniel Gross

The third paragraph states:

• Sasol is the ExxonMobil of South Africa, though its annual sales of about $10 billion are around what Exxon Mobil does in about 10 days. With 30,000 employees, including the largest number of Ph.D.s of any company in the Southern Hemisphere, Sasol is one of South Africa's largest employers. It produces about 38 percent of South Africa's fuel needs and accounts for about 4.4 percent of the country's GDP.

In the article Mr. Gross seems to assume that if Coal-To-Liquid (CTL) synthetic is to be made in the USA it will be made by Sasol. I don't see a foundation for such a presumption. Seems that the technology dates to the '30s, and Sasol has been developing it further for almost sixty years. It should be little of that process is under patent protection. A US company might hire a handful of those many PhDs to get the smarts needed to design facilities. Then if the government would cooperate with incentives rather than a windfall tax, it should be possible to get funding ans start construction. See, I figured it out.

Well, maybe not. That is one big "if" cited, and then there are more than a few more. Still, it seems a US company should be able to make this work.

As you see it, who would set up such a CTL industry in the US?