Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on October 13, 2014
Forget What You’ve Heard: Oil and Gas Are Actually “Renewable” Resources
We’ve been taught that fossil fuels, like oil and natural gas, formed hundreds of millions of years ago. Prehistoric animals that once roamed the earth died. From the buried remains of these animals as well as plants, a natural decomposition process took place that required eons of time, intense heat, and a lot of pressure. This prehistoric process formed the fuels we now use today to run our modern economy.
Given that it took millions of years to fill the earth up with oil and gas, there has always been a concern over how fast we are consuming these resources. This is what sparked the Peak Oil Theory, which states that with a finite resource like oil it will at some point hit its production peak and then it will be all downhill from there. That’s unless of course oil and gas are not finite resources, but instead turn out to actually be more renewable than we thought.
Renewable oil: From algae to green crude oil
Given the theory that fossil fuels were created by former living organisms, it suggests that given enough time, heat and pressure all fossil fuels would be “renewable.” So, theoretically, millions of years from now today’s organic matter could become oil. It’s the time involved in this process that has kept oil from being considered a renewable resource. That, however, is beginning to change.
Photo credit: Sapphire Energy.
Scientists are using algae to create a biofuel that closely resembles crude oil. This’s actually not all that surprising given that most of the oil found in shale is thought to come from marine algae that was buried and converted into oil as it cooked underground over time. However, a new process discovered by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has found a way to speed up the cooking process so that it can now convert a small mixture of algae and water into a kind of crude oil in less than an hour.
The process, which is called hydrothermal liquefaction, can even be used on other organic material like municipal sewage and be used as a drop in oil feedstock for refineries that process crude oil. Given the rapid time this oil can be created, it certainly calls into question the idea that oil can’t be a renewable resource.
One company that’s leading the way to grow crude oil is Sapphire Energy, which is working on a commercial demonstration scale algae-to-energy facility in New Mexico. The green crude oil, as its being called, requires sunlight, non-potable water, non-arable land and air to turn algae into oil. It’s main energy source is actually carbon dioxide as the algae converts it into oil. In fact, the algae consumes 12 to 14 kg of carbon dioxide per gallon of green crude that is produced, so because the process consumes carbon dioxide, it yields a 70% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions when compared to using traditional oil as a transportation fuel.
The green crude oil that will be produced from that farm will be chemically identical to traditional crude oil. That will allow the oil to be used in most refineries to be turned into gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel. What’s remarkable is that the process takes just a matter of weeks as opposed to hundreds of millions of years.
Renewable natural gas: Methane-belching microbes and more
Natural gas, likewise, could be considered a renewable fuel. Biogas, biomethane, or renewable natural gas is produced by organic waste as it breaks down. It is produced in landfills, wastewater treatment plants, commercial food waste facilities and farms. That raw biogas, however, can be collected and upgraded to meet natural gas pipeline quality specifications and then can be used just like the natural gas we get from a fossil fuel well. In fact, companies like Clean Energy Fuels (NASDAQ: CLNE ) source renewable natural gas from farms and landfills to be used as a transportation fuel, which it has branded as Redeem. Meanwhile, Waste Management (NYSE: WM ) has developed a technology that converts landfill gas into a fuel it uses for its fleet. Finally, some landfills capture methane and use it to produce electricity.
Methane from a landfill that’s used to generate electricity. Photo credit: Flickr user Gene Spesard.
Landfills, however, are far from the only renewable source of methane gas. Wetlands, livestock, termites, and even methane-belching microbes produce natural gas, suggesting that it’s not necessarily just a fossil fuel. Like algae oil this process could one day be commercialized. That would have the potential to produce abundant, renewable natural gas a whole lot quicker than the millions of years it took to create our current sources of natural gas.
There is a lot we still don’t know about our world. While we’re pretty sure that the oil and gas we use to fuel our economies came from a prehistoric world, that might not be the only source of this energy in the future. With science now beginning to figure out how to speed up the process, we might one day live in a world where oil and gas are both completely renewable resources.
15 Comments on "Forget What You’ve Heard: Oil and Gas Are Actually “Renewable” Resources"
rollin on Mon, 13th Oct 2014 7:36 am
Last ditch efforts that will not pan out.
Algae needs lots of sun and water and is far less efficient than solar electric. Are we going to essentially cover one or two large states with algae ponds to get a small portion of the energy we use now or do we find other better ways?
Landfills are temporary and limited, they depend upon a culture of waste and excess to produce a small amount of energy.
Cows with tubes up their butts to catch the methane? It would be funny if it didn’t torture the cows.
When are the people going to wake up to this flim-flam and get down to the real business of changing the way we do things?
ohanian on Mon, 13th Oct 2014 7:38 am
And your point is what? If I can’t buy it today at a price that I can afford then I don’t care about it.
Pctech on Mon, 13th Oct 2014 8:10 am
I doubt this could be scaled up to provide the amounts of oil or methane needed. Also what is the net energy gain component?
Nony on Mon, 13th Oct 2014 8:12 am
I wonder what is the API, yields, chemical composition of the bio-oil.
mo on Mon, 13th Oct 2014 8:49 am
Another “FoolISH” article
bobinget on Mon, 13th Oct 2014 9:25 am
Before there were fossil fueled machines, people cut grass by hand, let it dry where it lay, then raked it into
stacks and: Wikipedia;
Hay is grass , legumes or other herbaceous plant s that have been cut, dried, and … or bundles, then hauled to a central location for storage. …
39 KB (6,185 words) – 06:07, 8 October 2014
My point… Algae won’t jump into a vat on its own.
ghung on Mon, 13th Oct 2014 9:53 am
As usual, Fool has a big problem with scale. If they think any/all of these things will come close to scaling up to provide the remarkable energy infusion to economies that fossil fuels provide, they’re ignoring a lot of important math. Of course, I run into this every time I discuss these things with everyday people. They simply don’t have a clue, and are continuously misled by the professional liars, the Pied Pipers of growth. Magical thinking trumps systemic analysis every time.
poaecdotcom on Mon, 13th Oct 2014 11:58 am
It baffles me that ‘kangeroo s**t’ like this passes basic QC.
The Second Law is very well understood.
Where is the high order energy?
To think we could run BAU on diffuse sunlight jacked up by Algae in real time is childish.
Blows me away every time as it prevents us, as a society, from having a frank discussion about the energy confines of our future.
/Rant off
Kenz300 on Mon, 13th Oct 2014 12:00 pm
New Cost Analysis Shows Unsubsidized Renewables Increasingly Rival Fossil Fuels « Breaking Energy – Energy industry news, analysis, and commentary
http://breakingenergy.com/2014/09/25/new-cost-analysis-shows-unsubsidized-renewables-increasingly-rival-fossil-fuels/
louis wu on Mon, 13th Oct 2014 12:22 pm
“fool.com” the name couldn’t possibly be more appropriate.
yoananda on Mon, 13th Oct 2014 12:39 pm
The EROEI of oil algae is about 1.8 or 2 (if y remember well)…
It’s not even worth to talk about it.
Garbage article.
JuanP on Mon, 13th Oct 2014 2:58 pm
This is one funny article.
The title had me wondering whether the article was going to be about something crazy like Abiotic Oil. So I began reading it, with low expectations.
Then, as I read I got into the Algae Biofuels idea, which was beautifully presented, other than the lack of any issues of scale, resources, and time available to transition effectively.
Algae Biofuels sound so cool, who wouldn’t like them? Imagine, to make oil from algae using sunlight and non potable water, while at the same time capturing CO2, helping solve Climate Change in the process, too! 😉
I thought that after solving Peak Oil and Climate Change in one blow by making algae biofuels the solution, the article would reach a conclusion. I was wrong! The writer goes on to solve the Peak Gas dilemma by managing to make gas renewable by using captured methane from waste, with a complete lack of understanding of the energy and resources embedded in that waste.
I couldn’t read any further, but then I did come to this article looking for punishment for my sins.
Speculawyer on Mon, 13th Oct 2014 4:20 pm
They need to be a bit more selective on the article they republish here. Too much garbage.
Beery on Mon, 13th Oct 2014 7:45 pm
This is The Motley Fool after all. On the one hand, they’re saying that Peak Oil is nonsense and that we have hundreds of years until we have an energy problem, while on the other hand, they’re claiming that algae will solve all of our (nonexistent) problems. Before we can consider them at all seriously, they need to figure out where they stand – is Peak Oil a problem or isn’t it?
forbin on Tue, 14th Oct 2014 3:04 am
Peak Oil or peak gas
article jumps from one to ‘t’ other
biogas – huh , nothing new here , Dad showed me the big desiels engines at Mogden sewage works , they ran off methane from the works ….
saved money then , possible to save in the future – save the economy or run it ….don’t be daft
Forbin