Oil may have a future after all

[Savage_Messiah]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...le4133668.ece?

“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”

He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.

Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.

Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. “All of us here – everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,” Mr Pal says.

What is most remarkable about what they are doing is that instead of trying to reengineer the global economy – as is required, for example, for the use of hydrogen fuel – they are trying to make a product that is interchangeable with oil. The company claims that this “Oil 2.0” will not only be renewable but also carbon negative – meaning that the carbon it emits will be less than that sucked from the atmosphere by the raw materials from which it is made.

LS9 has already convinced one oil industry veteran of its plan: Bob Walsh, 50, who now serves as the firm’s president after a 26-year career at Shell, most recently running European supply operations in London. “How many times in your life do you get the opportunity to grow a multi-billion-dollar company?” he asks. It is a bold statement from a man who works in a glorified cubicle in a San Francisco industrial estate for a company that describes itself as being “prerevenue”.

Inside LS9’s cluttered laboratory – funded by $20 million of start-up capital from investors including Vinod Khosla, the Indian-American entrepreneur who co-founded Sun Micro-systems – Mr Pal explains that LS9’s bugs are single-cell organisms, each a fraction of a billionth the size of an ant. They start out as industrial yeast or nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, but LS9 modifies them by custom-de-signing their DNA. “Five to seven years ago, that process would have taken months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says. “Now it can take weeks and cost maybe $20,000.”

Because crude oil (which can be refined into other products, such as petroleum or jet fuel) is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by yeast or E. coli during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling to get the desired result.

For fermentation to take place you need raw material, or feedstock, as it is known in the biofuels industry. Anything will do as long as it can be broken down into sugars, with the byproduct ideally burnt to produce electricity to run the plant.

The company is not interested in using corn as feedstock, given the much-publicised problems created by using food crops for fuel, such as the tortilla inflation that recently caused food riots in Mexico City. Instead, different types of agricultural waste will be used according to whatever makes sense for the local climate and economy: wheat straw in California, for example, or woodchips in the South.

Using genetically modified bugs for fermentation is essentially the same as using natural bacteria to produce ethanol, although the energy-intensive final process of distillation is virtually eliminated because the bugs excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready.

The closest that LS9 has come to mass production is a 1,000-litre fermenting machine, which looks like a large stainless-steel jar, next to a wardrobe-sized computer connected by a tangle of cables and tubes. It has not yet been plugged in. The machine produces the equivalent of one barrel a week and takes up 40 sq ft of floor space.

However, to substitute America’s weekly oil consumption of 143 million barrels, you would need a facility that covered about 205 square miles, an area roughly the size of Chicago.

That is the main problem: although LS9 can produce its bug fuel in laboratory beakers, it has no idea whether it will be able produce the same results on a nationwide or even global scale.

“Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we’ll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011,” says Mr Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.

Are Americans ready to be putting genetically modified bug excretion in their cars? “It’s not the same as with food,” Mr Pal says. “We’re putting these bacteria in a very isolated container: their entire universe is in that tank. When we’re done with them, they’re destroyed.”

Besides, he says, there is greater good being served. “I have two children, and climate change is something that they are going to face. The energy crisis is something that they are going to face. We have a collective responsibility to do this.”

[79CamaroDiva]

i'd like to see how it pans out, but having just a deomonstration-scale plant by 2010 might mean they miss the bus in a lot of ways. That means being able to actually produce enough fuel for the country is still a long ways off. A few years of fuel prices the way they are, and I believe you'll be seeing a lot of changes in the way we live. Hydrogen, hybrid, and bio-fuel cars will be way ahead of them. IMO, petroleum based cars will be as outdated as crank starts in the next 10-15 years.

[cdacda13]

Thats cool and scary at the same time.

[enRo]

wtf.... all america has to do is say "**** saudi arabia, lets tap into Alaska for a couple years" this way the price of oil goes down due to loss revenue on the seller's POV. then we can say "**** alaska for now, oil prices dropped"... simple concept, alot better than having a bug **** oil???? lmaooo

[sweetbmxrider]

hmmm....

[madness410]

wow whoever masterizes this will be the next alfred einstein!!!

[sweetbmxrider]

albert?

[79CamaroDiva]

maybe alfred was alberts not so famous brother

[BonzoHansen]

"when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil."

My car runs on bug bile!

[alamantia]

dont matter anyway, we have more oil in colarado than the rest of the world combined, shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

http://www.rinf.com/columnists/news/...-oil-discovery

[Ian]

crude oil doesn't mean anything. we can have all the crude oil in the world, but if we don't have refineries, we cant use it.

[79CamaroDiva]

Originally Posted by alamantia

dont matter anyway, we have more oil in colarado than the rest of the world combined, shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

http://www.rinf.com/columnists/news/...-oil-discovery

thats nearly 2 years old.. the bill that was signed is almost 3 years old. I've never heard about it, but if its true, wtf are they waiting for?

[GP99GT]

i poop oil too sometimes

usually after a long night of drinking

well, at least it looks like oil

[Ian]

Originally Posted by BigDaddyKane

wtf.... all america has to do is say "**** saudi arabia, lets tap into Alaska for a couple years" this way the price of oil goes down due to loss revenue on the seller's POV. then we can say "**** alaska for now, oil prices dropped"... simple concept, alot better than having a bug **** oil???? lmaooo

we get more oil from Canada than Saudi Arabia

[DaSkinnyGuy]

The LS9 bug thats sweet. The LS9 is what powers the 2009 Corvette ZR-1. So maybe one day the LS9 bug will power the LS9 corvette.

The problem isnt were we are getting our oil. its the greddy OPEC owners. They are the ones making the prices way out of the extreme. I was talking to a guy who delievers gas. He said his boss is actually having a hard time dealing with the high prices. The tanker trucks have to fill up on diesel. Diesel is like $4.75. So $4.75 x 100gals = A hell alot of money just to fuel the truck to deliever the fuel. Now next thing I have been thinking alot about these gas prices. At this point I do not see fuel dropping more than $3 ever. By this point we have become so use to seeing prices in the high $3 range now peaking over $4. That once gas goes maybe down to $3.25 we are all going to think its a deal. The truth is gas should not be more that $2 a gallon. Besides that. This winter when people need to fill up their oil tanks to heat their homes. Its gonna cost rougly $1,200 to fill a 250 gallon tank of oil. Now thats 250 gallons and it wont last more than 2 months in the middle of the winter. So how are people suppose to heat their homes. If oil doesnt go down to like $2.50 this winter there is going to be a serious problem with people in the northeast and midwest. Fact being that last year oil companies made $40billion for the whole year and just this first quater of this year they made $36billion. Show the fact that they are just telling us they need to raise the prices when they dont. Theres no way that between late 2007 and early 2008 that we had like millions of new drivers. That caused that huge profit. Its because the profit is due to the fact oil companies have the prices triple of where they should be in reality. I could go on and on. These gas prices are killing me. It cost me like so much just to drive back and forth to work and school that by the end of the week like half my pay check is gone just to drive to work. To a consumer that hurts. And that is what is going to make our econmy come to a shutdown. Also this winter theres going to be alot of little children who are going to miss out on christmas. Because their parents would have spent up their yearly savings on buying gas for the mini van. No christmas means there most likely wont be a black friday this year.

[sweetbmxrider]

yeah chit sucks

[alamantia]

Originally Posted by 79CamaroDiva

thats nearly 2 years old.. the bill that was signed is almost 3 years old. I've never heard about it, but if its true, wtf are they waiting for?

you try squeezing oil from rock

[alamantia]

Originally Posted by sweetbmxrider

yeah chit sucks

i blame the ghey democrtats, its clearly their fault and noone else to blame, this whole oil scare is BS, the government has no insentive to help out aside from potentialy hurting the economy, this is mearly to make people more inclined to buy hybreads and hydro cars, think about it, people have been working on these vehicals for decades, now that were on the fore front of manufacturing such cars wadda you know, gas is over $4 a gallon, duh

Its either "hey bob, you gunna buy one of those new fangle hydro cars? Naaa, gas is only $1 a gallon who cares, lets keep spewing emissions into the enviortment


or

"hey bob, you gunna buy one of those new fangle hydro cars? Yes gas is killing me.

people are stupid and follw the masses aside from a few smart americans, why do you think reality TV is on, because it sucks azz, no, because people say its cool so idiots watch it.

Now the government is telling us we can keep up with oil supplies, we believe them and we by cars that run on water until the next water shortage, great foresight.

Im keeping my chevy and when all the dumb democrat ******* buy ****in stupid gay hydro cars my thick headded ass will be enjoying $1.00 gas because there isnt a demand for it anymore.

if you look at the forcasts gas will be under $2 by 2010. i mean who knows for sure but the biggest varible is the evelution of alternate fuel cars.

Im drunk and just got hopme from my hockey game and cant spell even when im sober but im right and anyone who dissagrees with me is wrong and a big fat jeark.

nite

[Savage_Messiah]

Originally Posted by DaSkinnyGuy

its the greddy OPEC owners.

The same peopel who own opec own an import tuner company???

[alamantia]

wow, i was hammered

[Untamed]

Five years from now, when the corn crops are all eaten by a genetically engineered bug, we'll look back and say "Well, seemed like a good idea at the time."

When has genetically engineered ANYTHING not come back to haunt us later?

[79CamaroDiva]

Originally Posted by Untamed

Five years from now, when the corn crops are all eaten by a genetically engineered bug, we'll look back and say "Well, seemed like a good idea at the time."

When has genetically engineered ANYTHING not come back to haunt us later?

flowers. most decorative flowers are genetically engineered. hasn't really caused a problem yet.

[Savage_Messiah]

Originally Posted by Untamed

Five years from now, when the corn crops are all eaten by a genetically engineered bug, we'll look back and say "Well, seemed like a good idea at the time."

When has genetically engineered ANYTHING not come back to haunt us later?

I don't think Dolly the sheep killed anybody

[DaSkinnyGuy]

Originally Posted by Savage_Messiah

The same peopel who own opec own an import tuner company???

Haha that company

[Frosty]

Originally Posted by BigDaddyKane

wtf.... all america has to do is say "**** saudi arabia, lets tap into Alaska for a couple years" this way the price of oil goes down due to loss revenue on the seller's POV. then we can say "**** alaska for now, oil prices dropped"... simple concept, alot better than having a bug **** oil???? lmaooo

Preach on brother